Shamir's New Video for 'Straight Boy' Tackles Whitewashing & Toxic Masculinity

While this may sound hyperbolic, it's not a stretch to claim that singer-songwriter Shamir Bailey represents many of the voices in the millennial, queer generation.

His music has always been political, raw, emotional, intersectional, and addressed many of the societal challenges that queer people, specifically queer POC, face.

His newest single calls out a group of people we’re all too familiar with—straight boys—and how they engage in toxic masculinity and further the cis/het patriarchy.  

In the song, aptly entitled "Straight Boy," Shamir sings:

All straight boys care about/is how they’re viewed from the outside

Cause being true is not their thing/though it eats them up internally

And they take it out on people like me all the time.

In addition to calling out straight men, his music video addresses how his identity has been co-opted. In the video, Shamir fades out and is replaced by a white man, who is similarly dressed, lip synching his music.

"['Straight Boys' is] about how frustrating it was for me to have my whole identity picked apart at a young age, just to see straight white men use it as an aesthetic choice," Shamir told NPR. "The video quite unequivocally depicts the process of whitewashing and the repudiation of the queer and people of color who pioneered."

Watch Shamir's video for "Straight Boy" below! And be on the lookout for his upcoming album Revelations, which is set to drop next month on November 3.