Welcome to 50 Days of Addison Rae, a Just PMSing original blog series where we explore all things Addison Rae, TikToker, dancer, YouTuber, Kardashian friend.
Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae are the two most followed creators on TikTok and they are both responsible for popularizing the Renegade dance. However, when they first started posting the Renegade dance on TikTok, they didn’t credit its creator, 14-year-old Black creator Jalaiah Harmon.
It’s not shocking that the two most followed creators on TikTok are white. White supremacy — and a perception that white people are more beautiful and talented — is rampant in modern culture. Today, when Charli and Addison Rae post dances, they typically credit the creator of the dance and most of the time, the creator is Black. Black people originate most trends.
In early February, Rebecca Jennings wrote about Jalaiah for Vox and Taylor Lorenz wrote a profile on Jalaiah for The New York Times, both attributing to Jalaiah finally getting proper credit for the dance. After that, Charli and Addison Rae met Jalaiah and filmed the Renegade dance for all of their TikToks.
In February, ET asked The Hype House about the controversy.
“I think the entire situation was kind of like a miscommunication in a way,” Addison Rae said. “We didn’t really know initially who made the dance because it is really hard to find the root of creators, especially on TikTok whenever there’s new trends and things popping up, but it was really cool to finally put a face to her name and meet her and do the dance with her.
“I think it was a lot of it had to do with like people not understanding that we truly didn’t know,” she continued. “We really didn’t know. It was never intentional and trying to take someone else’s dance and I had only done Renegade about three times on my page initially, so I really had no idea.”
Jalaiah has 2.8 million followers on TikTok. Charli has 102 million and Addison Rae has 71 million followers. When Charli hit 100 million followers, she celebrated by dueting Jalaiah with the Renegade dance. When Addison Rae hit 70 million, she also celebrated by posting a throwback video of her performing the Renegade dance and crediting Jalaiah in the caption.
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