During a segment on “Iyanla Fix My Life,” the show’s namesake host led rapper Hazel-E to her legacy room of Black women icons in an attempt to teach the MC a lesson about her vulgar lyrics.
“Do you know what those women had to do so that you could even be on television?” Iyanla Vanzant says on the Saturday, April 14 episode with photos of civil and Black women’s right’s activist Dorothy Height, educator Mary McLeod Bethune and others on the wall. “That’s your foundation. You never heard Ruby Dee call another Black woman out her name.”
After listing off trailblazers and questioning the “Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood” star’s lack of knowledge about them, Vanzant had Hazel read her lyrics to a photo of actress Dorothy Dandridge.
“Pop my butt, pop, pop, pop my butt, pop my butt,” Hazel recites of her 2010 song “Pop My Butt.”
“Do you know what ‘pop my butt’ meant to Harriet Tubman?” Vanzant responds. “It meant a whip! It meant a whip to her!”
Next, Hazel recited lyrics from her song, “Everything” to a photo of Rosa Parks.
“Everything I want I have, she says.
“You know what she wanted?” Vanzant responds. “A seat on the damn bus. … And what are you talking about? Go ‘head. Tell her what you talkin’ ’bout when you say it.”
“I turn up where I’m at ’cause I’m a frost b—-, I pay the cost to be the boss b—-,” Hazel says, reading more lyrics.
“Oh, you tellin’ Sojourner Truth you da boss b—-?” the host asks. “Really?”
Several viewers backed up Vanzant’s lesson.
“What a different perspective! I don’t listen to any of these new artists but hearing the lyrics read out loud to those great women…How embarrassing,” one Facebook user said. “My biggest issue with women…referring to themselves as ‘B’ or anyone else. That chops my hide!! It’s ignorant.”
“So many of our Black queens need to hear this. It is so sad to see the new generation of young Black queens feel the way to be proud is practically naked, shaking butt, fighting and referring to [herself] as boss b or bad b,” another said. “Please, please, please come back to queens, ladies, strong smart educated and classy!!!”‘
“I admire what Iyanla is doing, this matter is is going take a revolution with deep strategy,” someone else wrote. “Gotta start somewhere. Good Stuff!”
Yet while the moment was meant to be a serious drill on Hazel E’s pioneers, many thought the host was over the top and promptly made fun of the moment.
That part killed me 😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/vTSBBL0S3A
— 🌒 (@Jackie_brown27) April 13, 2018
— mish (@bitchisaidno_) April 13, 2018
https://twitter.com/Sicksteen_216/status/984780722803179521
