So much of the music industry and artist fandoms operate within the context of racial identity - so much so that discrimination exists in the past and still now in the present. If music solved racism, Kendrick Lamar wouldn’t have to yell at a white fan for saying the N-word on stage while rapping to his song. ” If great music had no color, a whole lot of black and brown artists would’ve made it onto the airwaves without so many barriers. It’s a happy myth that perpetuates the idea that racism is overblown or frivolous, flirting dangerously with the trope of “ not seeing race. I’ve found the most joy in life when you peel back the labels!!!”). It’s an example of how our racial identities can shape the art we consume, which makes it all the more uncomfortable to see claims from reaction-video fans that “music has no color” ( case in point : “Being white is a label. I can listen to whatever the hell I want.” I didn’t have a choice until I got older, but then it was hip-hop. We don’t grow up listening to this type of music, it’s just what it is,” Griffin says in his reaction to “Time.” “Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Luther Vandross, that’s the stuff I listened to.
“I know that a lot of y’all be like, ‘How you not hear Pink Floyd before?’ But I know there’s a lot of songs I can say that y’all haven’t heard before. His channel, Jamel_AKA_Jamal, has blown up from under 100,000 subscribers to more than 300,000 over the course of a year. The man who articulates this tension best is perhaps Jamel Griffin, who acknowledges the differences in his racial and cultural background in a number of reaction videos. It’s like that old cliché about dinner-table diplomacy, but with LPs of white dudes instead of regional foods. It’s like the look you get when you feed someone something delicious they’ve never tasted before. These are faces of genuine shock, confusion and pleasure. And to the credit of channels like No Life Shaq, Lost in Vegas, Jamel AKA Jamal, D-GiBBY, PinkMetalHead, Loganfam and beyond, I don’t see any play-acting in their reactions. But seeing his awe grow in real-time as he processed the music and lyrics felt a little like recommending a favorite song to your best friend and witnessing them lose their mind over how dope it is. I stumbled into this world after clicking on Davis’ reaction to Pink Floyd’s haunting “Time. “This is Martin Luther King shit, I’ve been watching these reaction vids for a while. … You’re doing more to bring us all together than anybody has in a long time,” writes Tim Johnson. ”Įlsewhere, on a reaction to “Free Bird” : “You and your fellow utubers are changing the world.
“Average ordinary white guy banging his head with a black man on a reaction video listening to Metallica… Is this world peace?” one fan says on Davis’ reaction to “One.
“This reaction can END all the racism talk in this country right now!!!” chirps a user named Matt Faulkner. Davis might say that a song like “Tennessee Whiskey” isn’t, in his words, “black or white, it’s beautiful,” but the clashing of cultures is exactly what people want to see. He’s a highlight in a YouTube cottage industry of black men and women reacting to music, and some of the fans can’t help but take to the comments and talk about the blurring of racial stereotypes. While I think it’s goofy fun to see, say, college kids listen to “Rush” for the first time, there’s something more complicated underlying the love around Davis and his reactions - namely, the fact that Davis, who grew up only listening to “Black” music, is joyously diving into genres that are embraced most by white audiences (e.g., classic rock, country, metal and alt rock). But turning his attention to foreign genres and famous songs he’d never heard before made Davis a star in a very particular kind of YouTube niche. Davis, aka “No Life Shaq,” already had a following for his reactions to hip-hop tracks. Turning on a camera and listening to Stapleton changed the trajectory of the 26-year-old’s YouTube career.
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