Jason Derulo has been working tirelessly on building his TikTok clout in 2020, managing to capture people’s attention with things like his teeth prank and a stream of never-ending videos. But it seems like Jason has bit off a little more than he can chew after some TikTok users started calling Derulo out for being culturally “disrespectful” after participating in something called the ‘Lean Like A Cholo’ challenge.
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Derulo caused a bit of a stir when he shared a video featuring himself, Sommer Ray, Tayler Holder, and girlfriend Jena Frumes dancing to Down AKA Kilo’s 2007 hit song, ‘Lean Like A Cholo’, as part of the Lean like a Cholo challenge that was started by TikTok user og_taco.
While the video quickly received millions of views, Jason was quickly bombarded with accusations of being culturally “disrespectful to Chicano culture” with his participation in the Lean like a Cholo challenge and many TikTok users urged Derulo to delete his vid.
While some users defended Derulo, others with a Chicano background (i.e people of Mexican descent) weren’t too pleased about Jason’s Lean like a Cholo TikTok challenge video. “Cholo” is a Chicano term used to refer to one another in the community and some felt like Derulo was appropriating Chicano culture just to jump on a popular trend and it comes off as disrespectful.
As per Daily Dot, a commenter pointed out how Jason and the others “could’ve at least took the time to learn the real dance” while another stated “Chicano culture isn’t a trend.” One commenter explained why Derulo’s video is problematic, writing “I don’t think this is offensive but [it’s] not right because cholos will dance and get called ghetto for it while they dance it and get [applauded].”
TikToke user @Og_taco, the one who created the Lean like a Cholo challenge, also disapproved of Jason Derulo’s video, writing in the comments “Ah nah they used my sound compas, and that [DON’T] feel right!”
As for how Jason responded to all this backlash, he commented ““[Please] explain to me why we shouldn’t dance to this song? Because I don’t get it. I’d never want to exclude any race from dancing to my music.” before writing something similar on Twitter.
Maybe lay off the TikTok dance challenges and stick to dumb teeth pranks for a bit, Jason Derulo. Or maybe just get off TikTok altogether since it’s a dangerous, info-sucking platform anyway.
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