When Canadian Musician Tory Lanez shared behind-the-scenes footage of him standing up for a dark-skinned video vixen who he claimed was replaced with a preferably fair model during the set of a video shoot, he was commended for his actions and for bringing to light the colorism in the entertainment industry.
Shooting the video for British rapper Nafe Smallz’s “Good Love“, Lanez, who features on the song shared the incident on his Instagram page on Sunday. In the video, the “Let Me Love You” singer can be seen performing with the dark-skinned lady when she is taken off set and replaced with the light-skinned one. Lanez, who notices the swap calls for the shoot to be cut and registers his displeasure.
He then goes ahead to tell the light-skinned lady she looks beautiful and has the dark-skinned lady return back to the set to perform.
“This is an On -Going problem in our community of entertainment that needs to stop. As a black man, Sometimes I’m going to joke about the black community just like we all do,” he posted.
“But what I’m not going to do is allow any of these directors to de-value our black women,” he added.
“Countless times I’ve seen directors swap out our women of color for women of lighter complexion, or women with straighter hair.
“It is our responsibility us artist to stand up and not let this happen.”
After the video went viral, the dark-skinned model involved in the incident, however, did not corroborate his account. According to her, Lanez, staged the whole incident. She also voiced support for the director.
“Where’s the scene then if Tory wanted me so bad,” she shared. “The director is the best director I know. Fake news.”
TMZ also reports that the directors of the video, Capone x Guise are surprised by the accusation. According to Capone, they have no issues with dark-skinned women as they use them for majority of their projects due to their involvement in Afrobeats music. He further added that most of the people on set during that scene were from Lanez’s camp and suggested the swap may have come from his people.
He added that his team would “never allow something as disgusting as what Tory Lanez is portraying,” TMZ further reports.
Tory Lanez took to his Instagram page on Monday to address the incident and deny it was staged.
“This is the one and only time ima address this. I went out of my way to bring awareness to an important topic of discussion that never gets addressed. The internet has a funny way of tryna make light of truthful sh*t. IF it was a publicity stunt why would I be doing it for someone elses music video?
“Why wouldn’t I have paid the females involved? And if I did pick both girls then how come there’s only shots of me with the ebony model and not with the other one?,” he added.
“Mind y’all this video happened 3 months ago and a behind the scenes camera man DM’d it to me the other day. All parties involved know what happened in the 30 minutes that I was at the shoot.”
What are your thoughts on this? Did Tory Lanez stage the entire incident?
