Rapper Juicy J, who recorded a really popular song about women who dance for money, just awarded 19-year-old biology major and single mother Zaire Holmes a $50,000 scholarship. Yea, Zaire!
Holmes was the grand prize winner of Juicy J's Video Contest scholarship, in which the rapper, in partnership with World Star Hip Hop, asked students to apply by recording a video "telling me or showing me why you deserve this money." When he announced the scholarship on Twitter last August, he tweeted, “Im giving out a 50k scholarships to the best chick that can twerk.”
Check out Holmes' winning entry.
It's a great video, but note that there's no twerking. And that's fine. She said she read the official contest rules, which do not list twerking as a requirement for eligibility. Upon selecting Holmes, Juicy J explained that his money shouldn't be given to "some chick shaking her ass," despite asking participants to do precisely that.
Juicy J has made quite a bit of money rapping about women who dance, so we're not quite sure why he's suddenly deemed them unworthy of scholarship money. (Well, we have some ideas.) And to frame it as a twerking scholarship, just so he could publicly shame those who actually did, is cruel, no?
Twitter wasn't here for him. (I should note here that some folks were actually here for Juicy J's slut-shaming antics, but I'm ignoring them.)
Akoto Ofori-Atta is the editor of The Grapevine. Like her Facebook page and follow her on Twitter.
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