Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Each summer, a song manages to take hold of the zeitgeist and become an inescapable earworm. This summer, that anthem seems to belong to the nefarious rebels against capitalism among us.
In bars, at rooftop brunches, at film premieres, and certainly blasting from Nissans filled with cackling baddies speeding by, you can hear Yung Miami imploring everyone to “spend dat” hard-earned cash, whether they got it through scamming, boosting, or beyond, on her latest single, “Spend Dat.”
While most of us can’t help but make a stank face and let our shoulders and hips sway when it comes on, a backlash is forming, with some calling for a boycott of the trendy track. However, despite recent comments she made under a post suggesting otherwise, India Arie is making it clear she is not among them.
“For clarity, I did not say that I think anyone needs to boycott this song,” she wrote in a text post to her Instagram Stories late Tuesday evening.
“I said it is a sign of where we are as a culture that this song has been accepted so widely,” she continued. “And that’s facts. I think people should do whatever they want to do. You do what you wanna do. I’ll do what I wanna do. And that’s that.”
In another post, alongside a link to a Substack, the “Brown Skin” singer added, “I also said that the way we are embracing the songs says a lot about where we are as a culture, which is just facts.”
The link leads to a video in which the Grammy winner goes more in-depth about her stance before discussing the 20th anniversary of her third studio album, “Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship,” the music industry, and more.
Although the R&B and soul singer says she’s not calling for anyone to stop listening to the song, she is using the backlash surrounding it to explain her long-held beliefs about music’s influence. According to her, songs carry a “frequency” that can shape the subconscious, which is why she’s intentional about what she consumes.
“People are like it’s just a song, no,” the “I Am Not My Hair” singer said in the video. “Nothing is just ‘anything’; everything has a frequency.”
Colors, food, cities, states, mountains, rivers, and beyond, the “Video” singer explained, all have their own frequencies.
“Music is pure frequency, it is sound frequency, and when you put sound together with words and it’s rhythmic, you get inside of people’s subconscious mind,” she said.
Comparing it to fast food versus more nutritious meals, the “Acoustic Soul” artist argued that different frequencies have different impacts and can be good or bad depending on what they are, while stopping short of explicitly saying “Spend Dat”—which she refused to utter by name—fell into either category.
“If you want to go be programmed by anything, or you want to go eat anything that’s on you and enjoy,” she said. “You go do what you want to do, and I’ll go do what I want to do, and if you go read my comments, you will see that that is actually the gist of what I said.”
“Spend Dat” is hardly the first song to cause this kind of cultural debate. Cardi B’s “WAP” outraged conservatives following behind generations of rap and rock music that have long featured songs about sex, murder, violence, and other taboo subjects. Yet most fans of those songs have very rarely ever acted on what they hear. Sometimes the appeal is simply stepping into the audacity of someone who might. There’s a freedom in boosting and scamming—or at least in the fantasy of it—a chance to imagine gaming a system like capitalism that has long gamed and disenfranchised them.
At a time when the economy is struggling, many are experiencing record job loss, housing feels increasingly out of reach, and many Americans are worried about their financial future if “Spend Dat” says something about the culture, perhaps it’s that people are tired of being broken by a system whose own “frequency” has only ever been good for 1% of us.
