Awkwafina’s Awkward ‘Little Mermaid’ Rap “The Scuttlebutt” Shows She’s Learned Nothing From “Blaccent” Backlash

You know that feeling when you’re innocently walking around and a bird decides to poop on you? There’s an element of surprise, quickly followed by disgust… and then you’re somewhat stuck with it until the moment passes and you’re able to clean the mess up. Awkwafina’s mismatched rap in the 2023 remake of The Little Mermaid is exactly like that.

The track was released with the album on May 19, 2023, and is as jarring on the big screen as on Spotify (read our review of The Little Mermaid here). Most of the movie follows Disney’s 1989 animated musical but the new version also features four original songs by Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda. Some of these songs meld effortlessly with Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s original score, while others stick out like a sore thumb. One particularly egregious offender? “The Scuttlebutt,” performed by Awkwafina’s Scuttle and Daveed Diggs’s Sebastian. 

Playing on the character’s name and the definition of “scuttlebutt,” the number is a brash rap about the town’s gossip amid Ariel’s (Halle Bailey) near-kiss with Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) and Ursula’s (Melissa McCarthy) arrival in the form of Vanessa (Jessica Alexander).

The musical number clearly has Miranda’s touch on it as Awkwafina delivers lines such as “From the women who wash all the clothes / To the hunter who arrows the bows / The chatter all over the palace / Is that your Prince Eric is gonna propose.” Meanwhile, despite being a skilled rapper, Diggs only offers his voice on a single shared verse.

Not only does the number feel forced among the musical’s well-known libretto and Miranda’s other three additional songs, which mimic the music surrounding them, but it also draws attention to several of Awkwafina’s previous controversies. The actor has been criticized for appropriating AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and a blaccent throughout her career, both of which are featured in her Comedy Central series Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens and in the 2018 movie Crazy Rich Asians. At the time, Awkwafina defended herself and claimed she picked up her manner of speaking from growing up in a diverse community. She wrote on Twitter, “My immigrant background allowed me to carve an American identity off the movies and TV shows I watched, the children I went to public school with, and my undying love and respect for hip hop,” and decided to take a break from the platform after the controversy started to spin out of control.

Now, I try not to dissect apologies/explanations or invalidate one’s personal experience, but I will say: “Girl, what are you doing?” While I would personally describe her voice in the musical number (and as Scuttle in general) as nails on a chalkboard, others are pointing out her — again — obvious blaccent, which is all the more prominent as she attempts to rap. One listener tweeted, “Making Awkwafina rap in her little blaccent for The Little Mermaid has got to be classified as a hate crime against Black people somewhere ain’t no way,” and another penned, “I only heard like 30 seconds of Awkwafina being forced to ‘rap’ using LMM’s [Lin-Manuel Miranda’s] flow and it’s haunted me ever since…why would he do that to her?”

Much like Awkwafina’s decision to leave Twitter, her approach to the rap implies that she doesn’t consider how cultural appropriation affects Black people, nor has she learned from her past controversies. According to Menken, the song is inspired by a Caribbean tune that he brought to Miranda and was meant to be a throwaway number. But instead of blending with the rest of the score, the song rips viewers out of the peaceful tone that comes after “Kiss the Girl” and the building tension from Ursula’s makeover. It also features Awkwafina forcing an accent so unnatural that listeners will breathe a sigh of relief when Diggs hops onto a verse — even though there are still more verses from Awkwafina to come.

Bigger than the inflections the actor adopts for the rap (and drops immediately after) is the potential impact that it’ll have on the reception of the movie. The Little Mermaid has already seen racist backlash solely from Bailey’s casting. And while catering to racist trolls should never be at the forefront when creating art, the tone-deafness around both the purpose of the song and who’s performing it could help amplify that unfortunate side of the conversation.

To take a movie like The Little Mermaid — which was a big deal when it premiered — and expect a remake to hold up requires one to be tuned into the current social sphere, and to evaluate what would add to the well-known story, rather than detract. With Jonah Hauer-King’s “Wild Uncharted Waters,” audiences get a romantic ballad sung by a lovestruck prince who’s desperate to find the woman who saved his life. In the past, these sorts of songs are often sung by women protagonists. Woo-hoo! Go feminism! And with “For the First Time,” listeners get insight into Ariel’s first impression of being on land: one line sees her questioning why people are eating her sea friends, which is a totally valid question. Thanks for letting us know that you care, Ariel.

With “The Scuttlebutt,” we are left with a 100% skippable song that not only resurfaces a controversy surrounding Awkwafina, the actor involved; but could also serve to exacerbate the racist conversation surrounding the movie. Perhaps Lin-Manuel Miranda should have left this song in the trash along with the rest of Ariel’s collection of dinglehoppers and snarfblatts? And that’s the scuttlebutt.