Sir Mix-A-Lot Defends Blake Lively’s “Oakland Booty” Instagram
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Actress Blake Lively caused a minor scandal at Cannes a few days ago when she Instagrammed a photo of herself on the red carpet with the questionable caption: “LA face with an Oakland booty.”
The quote is, of course, pulled from Sir Mix-A-Lot’s song “Baby Got Back.” The rapper has been quiet about the matter until now. Hollywood Reporter just published a condensed interview with Sir Mix-A-Lot in which he comments on the matter:
What I meant by “L.A.” was Hollywood. In other words, makeup or whatever it took to make that face look good, they do it in L.A. But, as much as you can throw makeup on something, you can’t make up the butt. That’s what L.A. face and Oakland booty meant. You can put makeup on that face and make it look beautiful, but a butt is a butt, a body is a body.
Fast-forward to Blake Lively. For her to look at her butt and that little waist and to say “L.A. face with an Oakland booty,” doesn’t that mean that the norm has changed, that the beautiful people have accepted our idea of beautiful? That’s the way I took it.
Now let me do this, as far as the critics are concerned: I don’t want to come off like, “Oh, he’s an Uncle Tom,” because I’m not. If what Blake Lively meant by that comment was, “Oh my goodness, I’ve gained weight, I look horrible,” if that’s what she meant — and I doubt that she did — then I’m with the critics. But no one in the world is gonna tell me that a woman that wears that dress is thinking that she’s fat. No, I’m sorry, it just doesn’t happen. It sounds like to me like she was giving the line props.
I think she’s saying, “I’ve got that Oakland booty,” or “I’m trying to get it.” I think we have to be careful what we wish for as African-Americans, because if you say she doesn’t have the right to say that, then how do you expect her at the same time to embrace your beauty? I mean, I don’t get it. I think it’s almost a nod of approval, and that was what I wanted. I wanted our idea of beautiful to be accepted.
You can read his entire take here. The site also points out that no one seemed to care when Khloe Kardashian Instagrammed the same thing last year.
