Sitting with Criticism from my Engagement of Residente

I’ve received criticism about my engagement with Residente’s “This is Not America” in the last few days that I’m really sitting with.

And the criticism largely revolves around 1) Residente’s 2019 interview where he talks about Gambino and makes anti-Black comments about U.S. rappers, and 2) whether the idea/enterprise of ‘America’ is a white colonial project in and of itself.

In 2019 Residente did an interview with UMOmag where he talked talked about Gambino’s “This is America.” He called Gambino a musical genius but expressed frustration with the way Gambino, likely unconsciously, equated “America” with the United States — something common in the U.S. But in critiquing what we could call U.S.-centrism or U.S. exceptionalism, Residente also created unhelpful hierarchies of oppression while attacking Black U.S. rappers.

Among his terrible comments, Residente said Black U.S. rappers “always talk about oppression” but “in reality immigrants are more oppressed.” He minimized the work of Kendrick Lamar and others. He downplayed poverty in the U.S., saying “real poverty” exists in Latin America.

People immediately critiqued Residente’s anti-Blackness noting that without Black rappers, globally, and Black U.S. rappers, specifically, hip-hop would not exist. People further noted that his critiques undermined the work of Latin American rappers who build off historic hip-hop. Moreover, they critiqued *Residente* for being the one creating a hierarchy of oppression while accusing U.S. rappers of doing the same.

When called out, Residente doubled down on his comments, dismissed the ways they were anti-Black, and negated any privilege he wielded in the world as a White, wealthy, Puerto Rican man.

When I was reflecting about Residente’s new work, “This is Not America,” I didn’t know about this interview and broader controversy. This is on me because a few google searches revealed a plethora of 2019 articles on the matter. Nonetheless, knowing about it now challenges how I read his new art and its relation to Gambino.

Can we read Residente’s “This is Not America” as building upon or offering a different perspective to Gambino? Or is it a continuation of his anti-Black critiques of U.S. rappers?

The second critique I am sitting with is whether the idea/enterprise of “America” in and of itself is so riddled with colonial violence that even the resistance movements Residente lifted up in his art would challenge the premise of “America” all together.

Lest we forget, the Americas exist because of European colonialism. The name “America” comes from an Italian colonizer — Amerigo Vespucci — who travelled to what we now call the Americas at the turn of the 16th century, contributing to colonial slaughter, pillaging, enslavement. While people have found fodder for liberation movements through the idea of the “Americas” — from Simón Bolívar to José Martí — many of these figures often maintained ties to ways of thinking and knowing connected to the West. Indeed, Bolívar’s vision of a unified “America” free of Spain was very different than his Haitian contemporaries like Toussaint Louverture who conceived of independence as freedom not just from a nation, but from White ways of engaging the world — a view requiring Black liberation.

How do we hold in tension the ways Residente, both, lifts up Latin American resistance movements in “This is Not America” while also maintaining and operating from this idea/concept of the Americas that is, in and of itself, tied to colonialism?

I am sitting with these critiques and their implications because I want to have the integrity to say I didn’t know, or hadn’t considered, something and must now engage the world differently as a result. I’m also sitting with these critiques because no one is above critique or challenge — not myself, not artists I like and appreciate.

So I offer this further reflection / corrective to my own thoughts to continue the conversation and the deeper implications it reveals about race, music, wealth, and freedom movements.

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As always, I don’t think alone. So thank you to those who responded to my posts with critical questions. And I also wanted to share *some* sources about the broader implications of this conversation.

• Latinxperts Episode 10: What Makes Reggaeton Black Music?
• José I. Fusté, Residente en la blanquitud boricua
• Bethonie Butler, Reggaeton needed a racial reckoning. Afro-Latinos are leading it.
• Mario Mercado Diaz, To My Fellow BoriBlancos: When We Say ‘Down with White Power,’ We Also Mean Our White Power
• Reggaeton Con La Gata