Lil Uzi Vert Responds to Accusations of Cultural Appropriation

Just days after Lil Uzi Vert debuted the massive pink diamond implanted in the center of his forehead, the rapper has been accused of cultural appropriation.

Early Sunday morning (Feb. 7), Uzi posted screenshots from his Instagram Story to Twitter, which contained images of one woman and two men, presumably of Hindu culture. The individuals have a symbolic marking on the center of their foreheads, which is called Bindu. In Hindu culture, Bindu is associated with Ajna Chakra—or the third eye chakra—and signifies the subconscious mind.

Lil Uzi captioned the image, “I’m just a Average dude Man,” including the man shrugging his shoulders emoji, along with the gem and flame emojis.

A Twitter user named @johnnyHfolly replied to the tweet, raising the question of cultural appropriation. “Where r all the people saying cultural appropriation? I guess it doesn’t matter when it’s asian cultures,” she tweeted yesterday afternoon.

In a now-unavailable tweet from a person by the Twitter handle @lmao_briannaa, she wrote Uzi last night, saying, “So you just supposedly know the intentions of everyone? You can read minds now ?”

This afternoon, the Philadelphia-bred rapper replied to @lmao_briannaa’s message and said, “Hey glad to see you sharing your thoughts and knowledge….. but I’m not mimicking anything I know about a lot and love different forms of art … do you even know where the images is from ? Honestly … I love y’all.”

Uzi’s message, however, has since been deleted.

He then tweeted that Nav put him on to Mahabharat, a 2013 Indian mythological television series. The photos Uzi first shared in his tweet that started cultural appropriation accusations are presumably screenshots from Mahabharat.

Last week, Uzi’s multimillion-dollar pink diamond was the talk of the internet. He says he paid New York City-based jeweler Elliot Eliantte for the diamond incrementally over the course of more than three years. Eliantte was the the first to reveal the diamond to the public last month. Lil Uzi Vert later gave fans a closer look at the stone last week.

It’s unclear how many M’s the former 2016 XXL Freshman dropped on his new face gem, but he says it was more than $2 million per carat and that the diamond is almost 11 carats in size.

XXL has reached out to a rep for Lil Uzi Vert for a comment about the cultural appropriation accusations.

See other fans calling out Uzi below.