Beyoncé will change an offensive lyric in herrecently released album Renaissance after a line in the track “Heated” was received with backlash from users on social media. A spokesperson for the singer told Billboard in a statement on Monday morning that “the word, not used intentionally in a harmful way, will be replaced.”
The lyrics went along the line of, “Yadda yadda yah, yadda yaddah yah, yah/ Yadda yadda yadda, bom bom, kah kah/ Spazzin’ on that ass/ Spaz on that ass/ Fan me quick, girl, I need my glass.”
The medical condition the slang term derives from is “spastic,” which refers to a “condition in which muscles stiffen or tighten, preventing normal fluid movement.” Additionally, disability advocate and writer Hannah Diviney wrote an op-ed in The Guardian on Monday in which she said that her “heart sank” when she heard the Renaissance lyric. “It’s not very often that I don’t know what to say, rendered speechless by ignorance, sadness and a simmering anger born of bone-deep exhaustion. But that’s how I feel right now,” Diviney said, she also called out Lizzo just six weeks ago for using the same word on her Special song “Grrrls.”
“That tweet of mine which explained how the slur was connected to my disability, cerebral palsy – took me less than five minutes to write and it went viral, landing on the front page of global news outlets including the BBC, New York Times and the Washington Post,” Diviney said of the comment that resulted in Lizzo apologizing for using the offensive term and then changing the lyric.
“Beyoncé’s commitment to storytelling musically and visually is unparalleled, as is her power to have the world paying attention to the narratives, struggles and nuanced lived experience of being a black woman – a world I can only ever understand as an ally, and have no desire to overshadow,” she added. “But that doesn’t excuse her use of ableist language – language that gets used and ignored all too often. Language you can be sure I will never ignore, no matter who it comes from or what the circumstances are.”
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