DaBaby is somehow becoming more shucky and jivey.
His newest video, “WIG,” is probably the funniest one yet. He’s in a weave store with a bunch of black women who have been camped outside to get their wigs – and throughout the video, he’s grinding up on a black female midget while making his funny faces.
This nigga is literally like a more extreme version of a racist advertisement from the 19th century.
For those unaware of the context:
“Shucking and jiving” is a reference to American negro behavior that is specifically designed to entertain white people. It has been argued that this was a kind of evolutionary mechanism of black men to get better treatment from slave masters. If a slave owner found a black man entertaining, he was much more likely to allow the slave in the main house, and to put him in charge of other slaves.
What makes it interesting is that it is a kind of humor that never would have been developed by Africans among other Africans – it was specifically adapted for white people’s amusement.
After slavery, you had minstrel shows (the blackface minstrel shows are more relevant to modern leftist talking points, but the original minstrel shows were all real black people). Then you had these ostentatious blacks integrated into early cinema. Then there were blaxploitation films – and Richard Pryor. Pryor was not hated by blacks, but they just weren’t interested in him, as it was comedy designed for whites.
If you watch Pryor, it is mostly self-deprecating jokes about black people and jokes about the black views on white people, mixed with extreme physical comedy and vulgarity. It only makes any sense in relation to white people. It is very funny.
Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock, etc. are shuck/jive descendants of Pryor.
All of the biggest rappers have employed some form of shuck ‘n’ jive since rap started, because this is now just a part of black culture whenever they interact with whites, but most of them walk a line between shucking and appealing to blacks. (For example: Snoop leaned into shucking a lot more than Dr. Dre.)
DaBaby is basically pure shucking and I can’t see that blacks would even get this bit. It’s totally designed for white consumption. You can picture this guy doing these dances and making these faces in a show at the wedding of a daughter of a slave owner.
Even when he talks about drugs or violence, it’s always in this silly and skittish way. But most of it is just sex humor, affected dance motions and funny faces. Black people apparently enjoy this more than I would expect, but I think black appreciation of DaBaby is with some black version of irony.
Shucking and jiving is much less offensive than other forms of black behavior.
Frankly, I’m surprised that after DaBaby was banished from the mainstream for saying he hates gays, there hasn’t been a leftist/Jewish campaign accusing him of appealing to racist tropes.