Influencer Hanna Berner was given the opportunity of a lifetime to interview celebrities on the red carpet at Vanity Fair’s Oscar party, which seems to be happening more and more as influencers grow in popularity. These micro-celebrities are given journalist jobs without any training in journalism, PR or media literacy. With proper training in these fields, reporters would know the extent of research required to be a successful interviewer. With enough knowledge, the interviewer will know what type of questions to ask, lessening the room for opinion and the chance to misspeak. Without that training, the interviewer is more likely to insert their personal opinion into these conversations, potentially opening the floodgate for ignorant statements. This is exactly what happened with Berner and Megan thee Stallion.
While interviewing the Grammy-award-winning rapper, influencer Hannah Berner mentioned how Megan’s music makes Berner want to fight someone. With grace, the rapper redirected the conversation and asserted how her music is about feeling good about oneself and liking to dance, which is clear to anyone who listens to the lyrics and truly understands what Megan’s saying.
This misunderstanding, and frankly, racist remark, highlights how rap is misunderstood. From the beginning, rap music has always been an outlet for how the rapper feels and has always had significant ties to the rapper’s life. Of course the genre has grown as more posers have come forward just wanting to make music and not relating to the lyrics of the song, but that doesn’t change that rap is extremely personal to true rappers. It’s a form of self-expression like any art form regardless of how the public receives it, and to say to a victim of domestic violence that her music makes the listener violent is disrespectful to the creator and rap as a whole.
Rap isn’t inherently violent. The art form has always used the artist’s life as a muse for the music. Yes, there are some violent themes in some songs, because they’re based on real situations in the rapper’s life. With rap being a method of transportation from poverty to wealth, the truth about violent instances comes with the territory, but not every rapper raps about violence. Rap is an art form that is inherently personal to the creator, and Megan has always been about dancing and self-love. This interview shows that popularity doesn’t equal capability. With proper training and respect for the topic she was covering, Berner could have shown that influencers are capable of job mobility. But for now, it might be time for influencers to stick to influencing and leaving the journalism to the professionals.
