Earlier this week Mountain Dew faced a hailstorm of criticism stemming from their new commercial, developed by rapper Tyler, The Creator, which many deemed as offensive and racist.
The 60 second ad, which depicted a battered white woman on crutches being urged to identify a suspect out of a lineup of black men, was ultimately pulled by the soft drink's parent company, PepsiCo.
Yesterday the Odd Future frontman shared his thoughts on the backlash during an interview with Billboard and blames a blog post written by Syracuse University professor, Dr. Boyce Watkins for sparking the controversy.
“I guess people are claiming that it's racist, which... you know, that wasn't even portrayed in that commercial, there's no type of hate being portrayed in that work of art at all -- which I'm confused by,” he said. “But this older black dude, Dr. Boyce Watkins, I guess he found it racist because I was portraying stereotypes, which is ridiculous because, one, all of those dudes [in the line-up] are my friends…”
“So for [Watkins] to nitpick and notice that, clearly shows his state of mind is on some other sh-- that I can't comprehend, for him to actually sit there and for him to notice that it's all blacks [in the lineup]. That wasn't my intention.”
Since then, both Watkins and Tyler have expressed their differences via Twitter, which has lead the 22-year-old to question the social analyst’s role as parent.
“Because you're so quick to judge something that you don't know the context, you're so quick to call me a racist and other stuff, but he didn't know where I was coming from,” he added during the interview. “But then he looked at what I have actually done, and now he wants to take his statement back. ‘My daughters listen to you.’”
“Okay, that's confusing, because if I'm such a racist, and such a bad person, and feeding negativity to the youth, why are your daughters listening to me? That shows you're a bad parent and a hypocrite if your daughters are listening to me and I'm such a bad person.”
To add a bit more clarity to the situation, Dr. Watkins responded to Tyler’s interview this morning via his YouTube channel. Check out his 22 minute response in the clip below.
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