15 People Dragged By “Hotep Twitter”

photo: YouTube screen capture

Kyrie Irving

Bruh, when Kyrie Irving throws a white party, he takes things a bit too literally. The man who helped LeBron James dethrone the Golden State Warriors celebrated bringing a ‘chip to Cleveland by inviting a bevy of Beckys on to his boat. And when “Woke Twitter” saw LeBron’s little homie turning his cruise vessel into the S.S. Jungle Fever, they lit him up in the same manner he lit up Steph Curry.

photo: Fox screen capture

Wendy Williams

Some time around July 8, Wendy Williams made some incredibly uninformed remarks about the NAACP and HBCUs. While allegedly losing a Chevrolet sponsorship and earning an, “I got time today, cuzz” moment from Roland Martin, Hotep Twitter attacked Wendy like the Beyhive on Becky With The Good Hair.

Kendrick Lamar

To Pimp A Butterfly gave everyone a case of selective amnesia. Before “Alright” was co-opted into a theme song for #BlackLivesMatter, Conrow Kenny reflected on the killing of Michael Brown and the subsequent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri by telling Billboard, “But when we don’t have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us?” Interestingly enough, Azealia Banks was one of the first to call him out for his stance.

photo: YouTube screen capture

Beyonce

Hotep Twitter can even verbally dress down even the seemingly unassailable Queen Bey. Before she was caking up from throwing verbal jabs at Jay Z’s alleged mistress, Beyonce looked a bit Becky-ish herself in some controversial Loreal ads. Bey claimed her French, African-American, and Native American roots, and all hell broke loose.

Don Lemon

Honestly, where do we start? He’s currently operating with a hood pass that’s about a permanent as a temporary work visa. Don Lemon has perpetuated the myth of “Black on Black crime,” sounded tone deaf about Michael Brown’s killing and held a huge sign with the word “N***er” on cable TV. Each of the above violations has rightfully gotten him dragged by the conscious keyboard crew.

photo: Instagram

Erykah Badu

They might not have sharpened their pitchforks, but a whole lot of people on Twitter were ready to throw their head wraps and Nag Champa incense at Fat Belly Bella in April. Badu sparked a discussion about high school girls wearing longer skirts to avoid arousing creepy, male teachers. The memes and soapbox commentary came swift and harsh, but Badu eventually clarified her stance in an interview with The Fader.

photo: Abel Fermin/WENN.com

Michael B. Jordan

The 2009 killing of Oscar Grant was a precursor to the current #BlackLivesMatter movement. This shouldn’t be lost on Michael B. Jordan, who portrayed Grant in 2013’s Fruitvale Station. And yet, Jordan claimed to be colorblind on the subject of race in a 2015 interview with GQ. Needless to say, Jordan was almost subjected to a Drop Squad-style deprogramming.

photo: WENN

A$AP Rocky

Despite being named after The God MC, Rocky has never really repped for the conscious crowd. Never was this more apparent than when Rocky doubled down on his 2015 Time Out New York interview by questioning what he called “bandwagon stuff” of #BlackLivesMatter and let the dreaded phrase “All Lives Matter” come out of his gold-toothed mouth.

Big Boi

Given how “woke” some of his elite bars sound, it was surprising that the concepts of gender norms and sexism were lost on Big Boi when he tweeted the following in May of 2016:

photo: Twitter

As Maurice Garland succinctly put it on this very site, Mr. Patton was “skewed on the Bar-B” by Hotep Twitter for his myopic commentary.

photo: Joseph Marzullo/WENN.com

Phylicia Rashad

Seeing nearly three dozen women accuse an ‘80s Black cultural icon of plying them with drugs and allegedly raping them is never comfortable. In the case of Bill Cosby, the situation was worsened by the likes of Raven Symone and Phylicia Rashad caping for ‘Cos. The woman formerly known as Claire Huxtable caught holy hell 140 characters at a time before walking back the statement, “Forget those women” under the guise of being misquoted.

photo: Adriana M. Barraza/WENN.com

Common

The Daily Show has always been an outlet for folks to drop a good truth bomb. That’s why Common’s seemingly Willie Lynch Letter-inspired plea to overcome systemic racism by forgetting about the past and “extending my hand in love” earned him some of the most vitriolic slander he’s seen since he was rocking crochet pants.

photo: Comedy Central/Viacom

Larry Wilmore

Larry Wilmore generally gets a G-Pass from Hotep Twitter. He had a hand in The Bernie Mac Show, In Living Color, Black-ish, and he puts in work as the host of Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show. But asking if Black women were “too bossy” in February of 2015 and calling President Obama “my n***a” at the 2016 White House Correspondents Dinner found him in the crosshairs like the dude in the Public Enemy logo. Suffice it to say, a certain segment of Twitter had their respective kufis all crooked over both incidents.

photo: Universal Pictures

Nia Long

Nitara Carlynn Long has been our perpetual queen since portraying Brandi in 1991’s Boyz n the Hood, but that didn’t stop the Kente Cloth set from going all the way in when she joined the #AllLivesMatter movement.

photo: WENN

KRS-One

We’re used to hearing The Blastmaster make jarring comments. It’s been that way since Criminal Minded dropped in 1987. But hearing KRS-One essentially sign off on Afrika Bambaataa allegedly freaking off with young men during his Zulu Nation founding days prompted a collective, “Dis tew much.” One might even refer to it as a bridge too far.

photo: WENN

Macklemore

Not that we can accurately gauge such things, but it sure seems like Macklemore always has good intentions. But whether he’s going on a nine-minute diatribe about white privilege or posting his GRAMMY apology text thread to Kendrick Lamar, dude stays doing too much. And that’s when you can inevitably count on the Oswald Bates set getting up in his mentions.