Had some extra time, so I wanted to talk about this Daniel Caesar YesJulz mess. Because recently
Daniel has returned to music with his third album, so he recently addressed his cancellation. so I
wanted to take a look into it, because it seems like the person he got behind is still doing the
same mess. So let’s go head and get into it. A few years ago, it seemed Daniel Caesar was
shaping up to be one of R&B’s biggest male acts. Daniel, whose real name is Ashton Simmonds,
received widespread acclaim after the release of his debut album, Freudian. Likely his most
popular song is 2017’s Best Part, featuring HER, which quickly became a modern r&b classic. Though
the song peaked at #75 on the hot 100, it did go #1 on the adult r&b songs chart,
and won the pair a grammy for Best r&b performance. In 2021, he featured on
Justin Biebers hit Peaches, alongside Giveon. Though it seemed like Daniel would quickly join
the likes of modern r&b gods like Frank Ocean, by 2019, he was at the center of a controversy that
would wound his career for years to come. So to fully understand this situation, we
have to take a detour and talk about YesJulz. If you’ve been on Twitter during this past Coachella
weekend, you've likely seen this picture of her. This is a white woman by the way. Julz was born in
Miami, and is of Italian and Puerto Rican descent. She was adopted and raised by Colombian parents.
I’m gonna be so honest and say I was blissfully unaware of who YesJulz was before a couple days
ago. Fez “whose Jewel” but her wiki page says she’s a social media personality, talent manager,
promoter, and entrepreneur. Apparently, she used to be big on SnapChat, so big she earned
the Nickname, the queen of SnapChat. As far as management goes, she’s managed 070 Shake, and has
her own entertainment company. And for reference, this is the picture on the homepage of Julz
website. A blurb about her company reads, “1AM has created and curated some of the most innovative
and exclusive experiences and activations for an impressive roster of clients that includes Puma,
Beats By Dre, Kanye West, Sprite, Jager Meister, Avion, Coors Light, Lyft, Red Bull,
EA Sports, T-Mobile, Skype,Vevo, Viber, Def Jam, 2 Chainz, Travis Scott, YG, Migos and many more.
They have activated at some of the biggest events across the U.S., including Coachella,
ComplexCon, Art Basel, MTV Video Music Awards, NBA All-Star Weekend & the “YE” bonfire in Wyoming.”
Back in 2017, Julz came under fire when she tweeted a picture of a crop top reading,
Niggas Lie Alot. She captioned the photo “am I allowed to wear this or not?” And I want to point
out that by doing this, Julz herself is implying that she’s aware she’s not black. So there is no
need to make up fairy tales about her heritage just to justify her behavior. After the first bit
of backlash, Julz claimed, “Guys, I was calling out some1 who suggested I wear this t-shirt
he made. I clearly wouldn’t wear it.” (lying meme) In their article covering the scandal,
Allure pointed out the irony in Julz’ claiming on her website her marketing agency is “bridging
the gap between cool and conscious.” yet she would make such a tone deaf move.
Julz later did the typical crying Snapchat apology and claimed, “I understand completely that I
fucked up and that word is not something that I should I ever be associated with in any context.”
Julz does have a pattern of this questionable and ignorant behavior, which she’s obviously
still doing today. Years ago, she retweeted some disparaging posts about black women. The tweets
read, “#whitethoughts damn why do all these black girls hate me? I’ve been so nice! *walks out club
with lightskinned dude* Black girls don’t like me cuz black men do! It’s a guarantee in any
situation. I walk in a room w/ a group of girls, room has men from every ethnicity…. Black men B
line straight 2 Julz!” So it’s obvious Julz ain’t out here to learn and grow or anything. Because
she’s doing that little fake ignorant thing that colorists do when they’re like all the black
girls hate me for no reason, meanwhile they’re shitting on them unprovoked every chance they get.
In January of 2019, Julz was under fire again after a controversial freestyle that once again
proved black women live in her head rent free. This all went down on an episode of her 1am
radio show, one where Soulja Boy was actually on as a guest. Other guests also did a free style,
and Julz did her own. One of her questionable lyrics reads, “Because my ass is fat and my
skin ain’t black, I’m a vulture catcher they hunting. Yet they never do nothing and they
never give back. They keep killing blacks.” After the immense backlash she faced, Julz
put out another meaningless apology on Instagram. Part of it reads, “I understand that delivering
this message in the form of a rap in a spur of the moment radio show was not the best decision
on my part. I have a lot of growing and learning to do and I will use this as an opportunity to
focus on educating myself and doing the work. I love this culture and only want to give back to
it what it’s given to me. I do not wish for my participation to be viewed as parasitic.”
Even if you were still in the mood to give Julz the benefit of the doubt at this point,
I do want to point out that this wasn’t like a Kendall Jenner Pepsi thing where you’re just so
out of touch you couldn’t even fathom people might react negatively. Julz was aware people might be
upset about her freestyle, which im would have been common sense if she knows as entrenched in
the “culture” as she claims. For one, she didn’t air the freestyle on the 1am radio show with the
rest of the episode. Before the video even surfaced, she Tweeted, “I got a video of me
freestyling… I’m not sure if I should post it or confiscate all evidence that it ever happened.”
Aside from people on social media in general, YesJulz was also called out by Scottie Beam, who
implied it was on sight, as well as Joe Budden. Joe Tweeted, “WackJulz dissing Blacks while being
surrounded by Blacks but can't seem to make a coin without […] Man everyone have a good Saturday.”
At the time, Joe and Scottie co-hosted on his Revolt TV show State of the Culture. The
show covers controversial topics regarding pop culture, politics, and social justice,
primarily through a hiphop lens. Joe and YesJulz actually crossed
paths before. They, along with Joe’s Ex fiance Cyn Santana, got into a Twitter argument back in 2017
after the crop top fiasco. Joe talked about Julz’ Controversies on a 2017 episode of his podcast.
However, back in 2015, he actually had Julz as a guest on a different podcast of his,
called I’ll Name This Podcast Later. So of course, people pointed out the hypocrisy in Joe now
wanting to criticize Julz when he was sharing his platform with her years ago. They also questioned
how genuine his outrage was, and whether he was just doing it now that it had become better for
business to be more socially conscious. in March of 2019, Julz was invited on the
Easily Offended Podcast to explain herself, which seemed to only make things worse. She claimed Joe
Budden had tried to be friends with her years prior, and even tried to date her. She also
told a story about him having a meltdown while trying to return some sweatpants and calling
her for help. This was actually brought up in the twitter spat with Joe and Cyn.
Julz also called out Scottie for her Tweet, which she found threatening. Scottie responded,
“I have to keep this simple because I have work to do. Everyone knows you slept your way into
this industry. Secondly, @YesJulz where are you? I’m in Newark. I am also in Jersey City
on Fridays. I’m in the city all the time. Send me your pin. Now. You and your black friends.”
Julz also mentioned Karen Civil, who she accused of being upset that she got to host Miami Rolling
Loud. Karen responded, “I’m not sure if you bumped your head before your interview. But
I never spoke on you doing rolling loud. I could careless what opportunities are
given to you because your blessings are not my blessings! I’ve been nothing but cordial to you.”
The Easily Offended hosts were criticized for giving Julez a platform to talk negatively about
black women, especially since their reasons for disliking Julz were valid. And in Karen’s case,
it seems like Julz brought her up entirely unprovoked. Several Tweets also pointed out
that Julz only got away with this behavior because several black men enabled it.
Just days after all of this discourse, Daniel defended Julz in an Instagram
Live. In response to all the hate comments about her, he stated,
“Why are we being so mean to Julz? Why are we being so mean to white people right now? That’s
a serious question. Why is it that we’re allowed to be disrespectful and rude to everybody else
and when anybody returns any type of energy to us. That’s not equality. I don’t wanna be
treated like I can’t take a joke. White people have been mean to us in the past,
yeah, but what are you going to do about it? Tell me what you’re going to do about that. There’s no
answer, other than creating and understanding and keeping it moving. You have to bridge that gap.”
Whether Daniel’s comment was a gross misunderstanding or a willful dismissal
of YesJulz’s behavior, we may never honestly know. But, he did basically dare people to
cancel him and not listen to his music if they disagreed, showing he was willing to die on that
hill regardless. And, with these statements he effectively killed his sophomore album sales.
Daniel tried to do some damage control days after the live, by apologizing in a separate
live. Still, when his album, Case Study 01 came in June of 2019, it only charted at #17 on the
Hot 100. This was an improvement from Freduian, which peaked at #25. Yet, an only eight spot jump
was underwhelming compared to the momentum Daniel had gained between albums before his controversial
statements. In addition, despite the album being projected to sell only 3,000 physical copies in
its first week, it only sold about 1600, some of the lowest figures Billboard had seen.
As expected, tweets flooded in showing little sympathy for Daniel’s album flopping after he
offended his main fanbase and doubled down. Several also pointed out how he
ruined his career to support YesJulz, and she couldn’t even be bothered to support the album.
In 2020, Daniel spoke up again in an interview to explain where he was coming from. He said,
“I was in the Philippines with my friends. And if you see our crew, it’s very multiracial. We’re
from Canada. We get along. And if I like you and I like what you’re doing, the fact that you’re
a different color from me isn’t enough for me to not benefit from what you have to offer the world
and vice versa. And we were in the Philippines and stuff was going on back home. We were having
a lot of breakthrough conversations, and I was going through a lot, and I was drinking a lot.
And I just saw someone being beat up on and it was personal to me. In retrospect, maybe that
wasn’t a hill to die on.” Daniel’s cancellation was one of the relative few that actually stuck.
A 2021 article recounting the situation acknowledged Twitter wouldn’t let Daniel’s
actions be forgotten, to the point where some of his remaining fans listened to him in secret.
In February, Daniel announced his third album, Never Enough.
In an Apple Music Interview, he apologized again to the black community for his comments. He said
in the interview, “I completely understand the response, and in time, after taking time to get
over myself and to really honestly look at myself and everything that was happening. I was wrong. I
was wrong, and I’m sorry about that.” He went on to say, “You can do and say
whatever you want, but it’s like, for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
And that’s physics, that’s science. That’s one of those things that the knowledge of that
can literally put my mind at ease where I’m like, oh, I did deserve. What happened, happened because
I deserved it, because I knocked the domino over and set a course in motion.” At first,
Daniel didn’t take accountability for his statements. His apologies were perfunctory,
and he chalked most of the backlash up to the Internet’s eagerness to take people’s statements
in bad faith. But once Daniel accepted his statements really did hurt people,
including people he knew personally, he decided needed to take real accountability.
Of course, the apology became a hot topic on social media, with some surprised Daniel even
apologized at all. A lot of people were willing to forgive Daniel, with some even admitting they
didn’t have much of an issue with him to begin with. Then of course, you had others claiming
Daniel realized he needed to win black fans over again to save his new album from flopping.
Regardless of Daniel’s intentions for his apology Never Enough, is currently the highest charting
album of his career. The album debuted at #14 on the hot 200, and as it was just released April
7th, it still has potential to climb. Daniel recorded the album by himself after quarantine,
and said this time he had new influences and a new style of R&B. Reviews of the album,
and its singles, have been positive. End video
Of course, with the release of Daniel’s album, and YesJulz having not changed one bit,
several publications and creators, myself included, wanted to revisit this whole debacle.
I have no dog in this fight. If you go out of your way to defend stupid shit, you get what you
get. And I’m not saying this should be the only reason he cares, because it’s not, but Daniel was
even dumber for this considering his fanbase was mostly black.But it is also important to
note that he has apologized, and the apology seems genuine this time, and he’s taking accountability
for his actions. So I guess at this point all we can do is take the apology however
we want to take it and move on whether that’s accepting the apology and listening to his music,
or acknowledging he apologized and still not being a fan. Either way, it is what it is.
So, if you have thoughts, drop them down below. And I’ll see you guys Saturday!