Chet Hanx Accused Of Hijacking Dancehall As He Declares Himself ‘White Don Dadda’ In ‘White Boy Summer’

Although he is being cheered on by the Queen of Dancehall Spice, Chet Hanx is being pelted with criticisms elsewhere, amid accusations of hijacking Dancehall and expropriating rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Summer slang and using it to cut his own track titled White Boy Summer.

The White Boy Summer video was released the same day that Prime Minister Andrew Holness asserted in the Jamaican Parliament, that Dancehall music is being hijacked, and that “other people are tekking our music and making more money off it because the people who are carrying the music not seeing the economic value in the music!”

Chet Hanks, who is the son of movie star Tom Hanks, proclaimed himself the “White Don Dadda” in the song, also an expropriation of Super Cat’s catchphrase “Don Dadda”, immortalized in his song Don Dadda from his 1992 album of the same name.

The term was first cemented in song by late Reggae Legend Bunny Wailer in his 1991 song Don Dadda on the African Beat riddim.  Don Dadda is described as the top don in Kingston’s innercity communities, who wields so much power, that both respected and feared by everyone including lesser dons and politicians.

Hanx’ accompanying music video for the song, which he debuted last Tuesday on YouTube, which includes images of himself running around with the Jamaican flag, has been described by NME magazine writer Nick Reilly, as a “a bizarre display of cultural appropriation and gaudy excess”.

“Despite previously attracting criticism for his use of Jamaican patois, he dons the accent once more as he raps: “Bad gyal, white don dada/ rude boy, it’s a white boy summer’.   Elsewhere, he wraps himself in a Jamaican flag for no reason whatsoever, and proceeds to pour litres of champagne onto a selection of models who, later, proceed to bounce Chet’s head off their bottoms,” Reilly wrote.

Chet’s video comes on the heels of a March 26 Instagram video, in which he  informed his nearly 500,000 followers, that “This summer is about to be a White Boy Summer… I’m not talking about a Trump, NASCAR type white” but rather “real vanilla kings,” like musicians Jack Harlow and Jon B.

So far, apart from Spice and a handful of Jamaicans, Chet’s White Boy Summer has not found favour with many Caribbean people, particularly on West Indi Made’s IG page, where many Jamaicans and their regional compatriots have branded him a “colonizer’ and a ‘culture vulture’ claiming his idea is in poor taste, especially in racially-charged America and that he should be given no publicity.

When Spice posted some flame icons, and told Chet: “Right desso it deh” on one of his White Boy Summer posts, IG user not_activenewaccountxo demanded that she: “stop embarrassing us. Stop encouraging this nonsense!”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNjCdbTgG0j/

Anya L. Henry, a writer for The Harvard Crimson, criticized what she described as Chet’s bizarre “fixation on redefining whiteness, frequent use of African American Vernacular English and odd social media presence” noting that his “disrespectful and inappropriate actions have, for many, made it incredibly hard to view White Boy Summer in a positive light”.

Henry highlighted his past controversial actions including “defending his usage of the N-word during his early rap days”, speaking in Jamaican Patois on the 2020 Golden Globes red carpet, and recent allegations of physical altercations between himself and ex-girlfriend Kiana Parker.

“While most users found the prospect of #WBS amusing, there remained valid criticisms of the trend’s connotation, as well as of Hanks himself. Some users pointed out the problematic nature of Hanks appropriating the term “Hot Girl Summer,” (coined by Meg Thee Stallion — a Black woman) as a means of unnecessarily elevating white men. Given 2020’s amplification of the Black Lives Matter Movement, it seems inappropriate to return white men to the center of the narrative,” she wrote.

“Throughout the past few years alone, general hate crimes in the United States have reached the highest levels in over a decade and Anti-Asian hate crimes have surged by 145 percent since 2019. In a society which consistently prioritizes the needs and desires of white men above those in marginalized communities, what is abnormal about White Boy Summer? Isn’t every day already catered towards white men?” she added.

On Saturday, Chet appropriated Rastafarian culture citing “Babylon” and used it to take aim at Naomi Fry, a reporter from The New Yorker Magazine, who had written an article which he thought was uncomplimentary to him and his White Boy Summer idea.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNvupA3gkRr/

“😂😂😂😂😂 I’m done… Babylon nuh want see di people unite. @frynaomifry @newyorkermag @vanityfair these are the people trying to dictate the culture,” he wrote.

“Hey yo, I got some funny shit to show you guys, OK.  So the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, they wrote shitty articles about me saying that my White Boy Summer is unacceptable. I wanna show you the people that write these articles, OK,” he said in an accompanying video post.

“So on the next slide I am going to show you the headline and then I’m gonna show you the woman who wrote the article about me.  Her name is Naomi Fry.  You go take a look at her and then let me know, who do you think is more tapped into the culture.  Me or her? Let me know,” he instructed.

In her article, Naomi Fry had ripped into Chet, noting that his pronouncement of a White Boy Summer, in the face of the sharp rise in violent white-supremacist actions, over the last few years, including the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville and the attempted Capitol coup, was highly irresponsible.

She also noted that there was unease expressed on Twitter, especially from Black users, one of whom tweeted: “White Boy Summer? Hope y’all wearing bullet proof vests in case one gets upset…” while another noted: “I’m sorry, but somebody needs to tell Chet Hanks that ‘white boy summer’ sounds like the title of a Netflix documentary about mass shootings”.

“If last summer was the summer of B.L.M., was this summer, already, the time to celebrate white boys?” was the remark of another.

Fry added that, “seemingly undeterred by accusations against him including being  criticized for not just using the N-word but defending his right to use it, claiming that it ‘unifies the culture of hip-hop across all races’, and later blaming the rant on his substance-abuse problem”, being slammed for cultural appropriation after speaking in Jamaican Patois at the Golden Globes, “Hanks kept posting white-boy-summer content on his Instagram”.

She also said that on Wednesday, “a Texas judge had granted a temporary protective order to an ex-girlfriend of Hanks’s, Kiana Parker, who is black, after she alleged that he had been physically and verbally abusive toward her”.

“In court filings, Parker claimed that, in incidents that took place between October of last year and January, Hanks grabbed her arm, broke her phone, threatened that he would “blow her brains out” as well as his own, and said that no one would believe her because she was just a “ghetto Black b-tch” and he was “Chet Hanks.”

“Through Marty Singer, the powerful Hollywood lawyer, Hanks has denied Parker’s allegations, and has sued her for assault and battery, theft, and return of money he alleges she stole from him,” she wrote.