Billie Eilish covered a number of topics from body image to clickbait in her GQ cover, but the singer also addressed racial double standards.
In a topic that Tyler the Creator also brought up during the Grammys this year, Eilish agreed with his statement that whenever a Black artist does anything “that’s genre-bending, they always put it in a ‘rap’ or ‘urban’ category.”
“I hate when people say, ‘Oh, you look like “blank.” You sound like “blank”,’ It was such a cool thing Tyler said. I agree with him about that term,” Eilish agreed in her interview.
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Eilish continued, “Don’t judge an artist off the way someone looks or the way someone dresses. Wasn’t Lizzo in the Best R&B category that night? I mean, she’s more pop than I am. Look, if I wasn’t white I would probably be in ‘rap’. Why? They just judge from what you look like and what they know. I think that is weird. The world wants to put you into a box; I’ve had it my whole career. Just because I am a white teenage female I am pop. Where am I pop? What part of my music sounds like pop?”
The singer also said that she partly agrees with people’s assessments that she only won her first Grammys because she is white.
“Then there’s the other side of this whole thing: people s**tting on me because I am white. ‘Oh, she’s white, that’s why she won.’ You know what? I agree with the sentiment; I get why people say that.”
“Truth is, they can say whatever they like, but don’t undermine all the hard work it took for me to get here,” she added. “I was dead surprised. And I was embarrassed, dude, I was fuckin’ embarrassed,” Billie shared. “I was in front of Ariana Grande and Lana Del Rey and fuckin’ Beyoncé is nominated, and I win. I was like, Noooo … I don’t deserve it. They deserve it.”
