I titled this section controversy, so what did you expect? That said, I am not a voice on racial relations, and take everything I say with many grains of salt. This is merely a post where I explore my own thoughts on the subject, and I may be dead wrong. Or dead right. You tell me! 

 I’m going to be honest and start with myself, then move onto Jay Versace. I actually respect Mr. Versace a bit, which made his words hurt. So let’s back up to the year 2003, when a film named Malibu’s Most Wanted came out. This movie made fun of a white guy who wanted to be black, and for some reason that made me want to be just like the guy in the movie. Weird, right? So I did what any 8th grader does to fit in, I begged my mom to buy me clothes that would fit into this ethos and give me the popularity I so badly craved. I came back to school with Southpole, Phat Farm, and Rocawear clothing. In my head, I thought I’d made it. Turns out, I looked liked a big dummy, and many kids made fun of me, which was par for the course in middle school. Right when I thought I had finally won, it turns out I had lost. I gave up on the clothes very quickly, and went back to letting my mom dress me.

Jay Versace is a young (24 years old at time of writing this) man who rose to fame in childhood via Vine. If you don’t know what Vine is, I have to ask where you’ve been the last 10 years, and tell you to Google it. After that, I’m not sure exactly what he did, but he has recently reinvented himself in the hip-hop scene as a very legitimate producer. He co-produced the final beat on Tyler the Creator’s Grammy-winning CMIYGL (Call Me If You Get Lost), and has also produced for underground legend Westside Gunn, who is notoriously picky about the beats he chooses to rap over. Recently, as in two weeks ago, his mother passed away, which makes the timing of my post god awful, but hurt people hurt people!!!!

So here’s the juicy story: I was in an Instagram Live for a very dope cat named ovrkast. who raps in a similar vein of the current emo lyrical type guys like MIKE, Medhane, Maxo, and all the others who will play on your Spotify algorithm when you listen to these guys. What set’s ovrkast. apart from the others is that he actually produces his own music, and he is pretty damn good at it. In his IG Live’s that he streams, he will make beats on the spot on the drums and drum machine, and they can be really good, especially considering that they are made in 5 minutes sometimes. So in the IG Live chat section, I was complimenting ovrkast. or giving an opinion on something, and Jay Versace writes back to me “shut up, you’re white” or something along those lines. That felt like complete bullshit to me, because even though it’s well documented that white people have stolen the music of black people, which is fucked up, it doesn’t mean that my opinion on music isn’t as valid, and I would argue I probably know more about hip-hop than he does. Him saying that makes me think he is a bit of a douche, but hard to call someone a douche when his mom just died. But even his post about his mom rings douchey, he wrote “don’t tell me it’ll get better, don’t tell me to heal, don’t sooth me, let me be broken, thank you for all the prayers and support. ima miss u mom // logging off.” This post isn’t flagrant or anything, it’s just unnecessary. Honestly almost every post he does on Twitter seems to annoy me in some fashion, and I don’t follow him but it somehow shows up in my suggested posts or whatever. I’m also a POS for beating him while he is down, but he posted this leave me alone vibe type of tweet I quoted above a week after a sincere and touching GoFundMe post that had a completely different tone. The stark difference between the GoFundMe post and his tweet screamed fake to me. But again, I’m only writing this because I was butthurt about what he said to me, and I think he kinda sucks. And I can’t stand fake fucks.

Whether Jay Versace is an asshole or not, I do not know, but I do feel even for assholes who have to deal with loss, having experienced it myself in a very intense way recently. I can fully relate to him. That said, I cannot relate to him insulting me. I only let my family and friends do that. Grrrrrr. Hopefully he makes some dope beats in the future, so I can forget my mini-beef with him. And I hope he feels better soon. Then later another random guy said the same exact thing to me in a comment section when I gave my opinion on a song that differed from his. I guess my opinion on hip-hop and therefore this blog is totally invalid due to me being white. I still know I’m more tapped in than 99.9999% of people of all colors, so nothing will stop me, esp. not Jay Versace, who has done some impressive things, but isn’t a legend or close to it by any means. If someone more legit told me off, I’d weep. Jay seems like a douche though via social media, ngl, but we all do to some degree, and I very may well come off like a douche on this blog, so I guess takes one to know one haha.