For years, Bruno Mars has been subject to criticisms that he has built a career profiting off the cultural appropriation of traditionally black music.
Criticisms levied against Mars accuse him of being a culture vulture that leans into his racial ambiguity (he is of Filipino, Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish descent) to cross-genre appeal.
In a video published by The Grapevine back in 2018, writer and activist Seren Sensei expanded on her criticisms of Mars: “Bruno Mars 100% is a cultural appropriator. He is not black, at all, and he plays up his racial ambiguity to cross genres,” she said.
“What Bruno Mars does, is he takes pre-existing work and he just completely, word-for-word recreates it, extrapolates it,” she added. “He does not create it, he does not improve upon it, he does not make it better.
“He’s a karaoke singer, he’s a wedding singer, he’s the person you hire to do Michael Jackson and Prince covers. Yet Bruno Mars has an Album of the Year Grammy and Prince never won an Album of the Year Grammy.”
Mars recently sat down with The Breakfast Club in an appearance that saw him respond to critics that have accused him of cultural appropriation; arguing that his music “comes from love.”
“I would say you can’t find an interview where I am not talking about the entertainers that have come before me,” he said. “The only reason why I’m here is because of James Brown, Prince, Michael [Jackson] – that’s the only reason why I’m here.
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“I’m growing up as a kid watching Bobby Brown, saying, ‘OK, if that’s what it takes to make it then I gotta do the running man, I gotta learn how to do the moonwalk’. That’s it. This music comes from love and if you can’t hear that, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
He continued, “What’s the point if we, as musicians, can’t learn from the guys who came before us? Why did they do it? I hope later on down the road there’s gonna be a band that’s taking what we did and flipping that and freaking that and putting their own spin on it, because if they don’t then what was the point of us doing this?” You can watch the interview below.
Check out Bruno Mars discussing cultural appropriation on The Breakfast Club:
