(G)I-DLE’s Yuqi Goes Viral For “Wildly” Misusing AAVE
(G)I-DLE’s Yuqi recently went viral for all the wrong reasons.
Earlier this year, Yuqi made her Korean solo debut with the mini album Yuq1.
The album’s lead track gained attention for its risqué lyrics and paid homage to classic horror characters like Ghostface.
In addition to this track, Yuqi also released a special performance video for the track “On Clap (feat. Lexie Liu).” The video features the idol dancing to the hip-hop track with backup dancers.
It is a clip from this video that has since gone viral but has mainly received criticism.
Currently sitting at 2.7 million views on one tweet, the video portion features the song’s lyrics on the screen.
literally what the fuck is she talking about pic.twitter.com/IHuTBwEK0v
— r ⚢ (@viianwich) July 17, 2024
The criticism is based around the song using AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), incorrectly through out.
Lines like “this beat on slap” and “bad boogie babies on tap” do not make sense when following the rules of AAVE. As a whole, many felt that the entirety of this video did not make sense, also calling out the songs’ writers.
the “then eat little sweets” part takes me out so bad because how did you manage to make a nonsensical song even more nonsensical https://t.co/rRiI8SIPiU
— sade (@aespalert) July 18, 2024
just a bunch of jumbled phrases none of this makes sense like😭 https://t.co/x7k3Iy2xIv
— FROMIS COMEBACK (@im_unhaoppy) July 17, 2024
what the fuck is a bad boogie baby https://t.co/tyC4gpIv1a
— quixø 🇵🇸 (@whosquixo) July 18, 2024
Misusage of AAVE can be considered offensive (usage in general can be considered cultural appropriation), as the language, like others, is a part of the culture and has its own rules that must be followed.
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For example, “The beat on clap,” seems to be a mixture of two commonly used phrases. It seems to use clap in place of slap, which is usually used to describe something as “good” i.e. “This song slaps.” When saying that something is “on something,” usually it is used with an adjective to describe the first word. For example, “Waist on skinny” is a way of describing a thin waist.
Netizens have discussed this song and others using AAVE incorrectly, calling for the practice to stop.
These kpop idols need to stop using aave 😭 https://t.co/QCXLNgbvnO
— aespaRina| WALK ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ (@jhpradarina) July 18, 2024
begging idols to leave ts to black people. https://t.co/KqiEi9IciM
— mercy ♡ (@REMWIFEYY) July 18, 2024
I hate kpop songs that try to sound american like this and use a lot of random nonsense expressions and "shesh, boom pow, ratatata", it's so cringe and corny https://t.co/NjPvN6DCmU
— °⋆⁺ Nick *⊹ﾟ (@xiunicolee) July 18, 2024
