Music Producer, Pharell Williams caught a lot of flack from the black community after he uveiled the cover of his new album entitled “GIRL“. As seen in the picture above, the album cover features The Oscar nominee, 40 standing alongside three women; one caucasian, one latina and one of mixed decent.
Clearly the obvious dark brown shade is missing from the mix and as a result there was an uproar on social media about it. “Pharell’s intent to display one shade of a woman was in poor taste ” said one critic. Meanwhile Pharell told the YBF that one of the women pictured above is indeed BLACK along with a lengthy response to the criticism.
” They’re ill informed. The woman I’m standing closest to, she is black and she’s been a friend of mine for a long time. You know, I’m confused by it – said Pharell . Then they’re going going to ask me do I not have an Indian woman on there or a Pakistani woman on there? But meanwhile I do, She is African American and I feel sorry for her that people will look her dead in her face like ‘she ain’t black‘. It’s a girl I use to date years ago.”
” It’s just so unfortunate because it’s 2014 and we have a President [who’s black], Is this what it is? Is it she’s not brown? I don’t feel funny about our President because he is what he is. ”
” Meanwhile, has anybody forgotten that I’m black myself? I wake up everyday and I wave the black flag. Everything that I’m doing. You know, this ‘Happy‘ song is going #1. What is the guy that’s singing the song? What do you mean? ”
I think the issue here was more about the ‘COMPLEXION’ than the whole black vs white debate if wer’e going to speak the truth here. While I agree that a black people are made of many shades, I feel like Pharell fail to address the underlying issue fully [and that could be simply due to the POLITICS of the industry].