Benny Blanco faces ‘racist’ allegations after revealing controversial album cover
Benny Blanco has faced backlash over his new album cover Hermoso.
The American singer, who described himself as a ‘chubby Jewish kid from Virginia’ to the New York Times in 2018, is set to drop an eight-track album, each with a Spanish title.
Some people have accused the Latin-inspired album and the 38-year-old’s caricature-esque mask on the artwork of being ‘racist’.
“This looks racist towards every race,” one person tweeted.
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“This is like, minstrels show levels of racism. Who thought this was even remotely okay,” another wrote.
Someone else said: “‘Yeah man I'm gonna make an album where I pretend to be Hispanic while dressed in a massive vaguely Latino caricature bobblehead."
“I get that it's *supposed* to be a caricature of himself but it does NOT come off that way.”
Others thought that the artwork was just an ‘exaggerated version of himself’.
“Y’all that’s literally his face lmfao. He’s not making fun of latinos, why would y’all claim that,” one person wrote.
Some people thought he was leaning into the cruel and unfair online conversations about his appearance.
“It’s literally a caricature of his own face lmao. People call him ugly snd hes leaning into it. What Hispanic caricature looks anything like this,” another penned.
“If I had to guess, I think he's leaning into the whole ‘he's ugly’ thing you see a lot on stan twitter/adjacent spaces. It looks like an exaggeration/caricature of him made to look specifically hideous,” someone else suggested.
Blanco previously revealed that even his wife Selena Gomez can’t comprehend how he copes with the amount of online hate he gets about the way he looks.
“Selena will come to me, and she’ll be like, ‘I can’t believe how well you can [cope]’—she’s like, ‘I’ll see things, and I’ll want to write back in the comments about things,’” he said on his podcast Friends Keep Secrets.
Blanco admitted that he is ‘not a comments guy and when I do [see them], when like [my friends will] tell me, [it’s] because they know I have like the thickest skin’.
The idea that the album cover is about abuse he's received over his appearance might be supported by the title Hermoso, which in English means beautiful or handsome.
As for why Blanco is releasing a Latin music album, he told El Pais he's grown up with the music after living in a neighbourhood with a large Latin population in Reston, Virginia.
He said: "I grew up in an area with a large Latin population, so that music has surrounded me since I was a child.
"You'd get in the car and Jeanette would be playing; in another car, cumbia would be on.
"I was always drawn to the drums and how the rhythms interacted with each other. It's a culture that's always full of fresh ideas and people who aren't afraid to go against the grain."
Hermoso features collaborations from Becky G, Kali Uchis, Feid, Myke Towers, Mora and BB Trickz. It dropped today (14 August).
LADbible Group has contacted Benny Blanco’s representatives for comment.
Topics: Benny Blanco, Celebrity, Music, Racism
Anish Vij