Lakeith Stanfield – “Automatic” (Charlamagne Tha God Diss Track)
For the past few days, Lakeith Stanfield, the enormously likable actor from things like Atlanta and Sorry To Bother You, has been engaged in a public feud with the radio host Charlamagne Tha God. And since then, the whole thing has expanded into rap music, despite neither one of them being actual full-time rappers.
Last week, in a since-deleted Instagram post, Stanfield described various popular black media outlets, including Charlamagne’s show The Breakfast Club, of being “anti black.” As Complex reports, Stanfield wrote this:
It’s a fact that a lot of these platforms are usually or tend to be feeding grounds for negative reinforcement toward BLACK “nonconformists”. They bolster faux vanity and hold a white supremacists scope over black men and women often highlighting negative attributes and downplaying mind expanding ones. They serve as bottomless coward consumption pits and digital, audio, or otherwise slave mentatilty museums. @ all you want
Afterward, Charlamange, on The Breakfast Club, named Stanfield the “Donkey Of The Day,” a regular feature on the radio show. Charlamagne defended himself from accusations of being anti-black and claimed that Stanfield would never go after “any of the white outlets that do the same damn thing.” He accused Stanfield of ignoring black outlets while talking to white ones, and he also called Stanfield out for rapping homophobic slurs on Instagram Live: “You haven’t always been this woke warrior you claim to be.” Here’s Charlamagne’s segment:
Over the weekend, Stanfield responded by sharing a song called “Automatic” on YouTube. Stanfield used to post occasional songs on that YouTube page, but this is his first in three years. The song isn’t exactly about Charlamagne, but it does mention him by name: “I’m black, I’m Atlanta, I’m the Hall Of Fame / Insecure, you afraid, you’s a Charlamagne.” The cover art, as posted on YouTube, sure looks like a shot at Charlamagne. The song’s YouTube description says that Stanfield is making a new album called Self Control and that it’s “about embracing the chaotic.” Here’s the song:
Stanfield has rapped in movies like Short Term 12 and Sorry To Bother You, and he rapped a verse on the Coup’s “OYAHYTT,” from the Sorry To Bother You soundtrack. He also played Snoop Dogg in Straight Outta Compton.