Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler is the star of Fall Out Boy’s newest music video for their 2023 album’s title track, “So Much for Stardust”, playing the role of an emo cowboy. 

 

 

If you’re struggling to make the connection between a Black basketball player and the latest Fall Out Boy music video, let me provide some context. 

Back in October, Jimmy showed up to the team’s press day with what GQ called an “emo kid starter pack”, which included black nail polish, face piercings in his lip, nose and left brow, and of course, straightened curtain bangs dominating one side of his face and one side of his face only.

Naturally, memes began pouring in on social media. 

 

Conversely, there was also a sense of genuine concern about the state of his mental health when he debuted his new look, mainly from a lot of Black basketball fans who were perplexed by him trading in his naturally textured hair in favour of adopting the aesthetic typical of a white midwestern teenager who’d just had their heart broken and was grappling with the difficulties of life. Some people chalked it up to his reputation as a troll, while others took his words at face value when he told cameras that he was emo.

 

It was certainly a stark contrast from how he appeared the year prior, with braided hair extensions, and even that was a complete (and very calculated) departure from his actual on court aesthetic. According to GQ, his 13 years in the league have made him pretty seasoned and well-versed when it comes to how the “media machine” operates. Knowing that whatever photo was taken that day was going to be used all season long, he exercised some agency in how he appeared. 

But Jimmy starring in Fall Out Boy’s new music video shows that perhaps his understanding of the media machine extends far beyond just the realm of the sport. In that sense, credit is due to both Jimmy and Fall Out Boy for capitalizing on this opportunity, which simultaneously gives some people something to laugh at and for others, something to identify with.

 

As someone who had an emo phase growing up, the only person I saw that looked like me and embodied even the slightest bit of emo was Canadian singer Fefe Dobson. But even on her most emo days, people like her and I didn’t have the hair texture for a full send on the emo aesthetic, at least when it came to the hair, which, let’s admit, is the main star of the emo show. It was yet another reminder that emo, among so many other things, was not made for us. 

We’re in the midst of a reckoning right now with Black people taking up space in places that are either not meant to be occupied by us, or spaces that historically, have been opposed to having us there. Take country music, for example. Last year around this time, I wrote this feature on all the amazing Black country singers taking the genre by storm. There have always been Black country singers, you just don’t hear our music on country radio stations…or country TV stations…or country award shows. You get the point.

 

And yet, just one year later, Beyoncé, one of the biggest musical talents in the world, is now releasing a country-themed album. It’s something that, in addition to appearing in music videos, Jimmy says he, too, plans on doing. Back in October, he chatted with Rolling Stone about his plans to release a country music album, and he spoke of the roughly 45 songs he had made so far. He said he’d been writing and producing country music, though he planned to keep the artists he was going to feature as a surprise, saying there would be “real artists and songwriters”.

"Maybe a week before training camp I’ll get down and do some," he told the outlet. "There’s definitely going to be an album. That’s the goal. I just don’t know when."

What stands out in his interview with Rolling Stone is his discussion of how he fell in love with country music, which he says was in 2010. In the locker room, his teammates at Marquette University played non-stop hip-hop. To spite them, he started playing Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl”, as it was the only country song he had in his playlist. Their response?

'Turn that s--- down! Ain’t nobody want to hear that!'"

 

Whether in seriousness or in jest, I’d argue that most Black people who grew up watching or doing something that wasn’t also listened to, watched or done by the majority faced this kind of reaction from their peers. That was certainly the case for me when I had control of the auxiliary cord. Whatever excitement I had over exposing people to new music and showing off my versatile taste was clouded by the fear that I would lose whatever social rank I had for being some loser that liked rock, country and classic 80s. 

That’s part of the reason why Jimmy donning a full emo aesthetic and actually being celebrated by Fall Out Boy for it is pretty f-cking epic. If it was another band, maybe it wouldn’t be. But among the audiences of bands like Fall Out Boy, Paramore and Panic! At The Disco, are either closeted or widely open Black fans, like Jimmy. The other part of this that’s so epic is because Jimmy, in many ways, fits society’s stereotype of what people believe Black men are in that he’s athletic and plays a sport. He’s reminding us all that we are layered. We are nuanced. We are multidimensional.

It’s not that there aren’t Black rock music fans. Or Black emo kids, and in Jimmy’s case, adults. Or Black country fans. It’s that there is such a narrow scope on what “cool” Black culture looks like that when we step even the slightest bit outside of that, it’s pretty obvious, and not always celebrated. So personally, I’m not only thrilled to see Jimmy in this music new music video, but more attracted to him now than ever before. Because he embodies what Blackness means to me – versatile, edgy, and totally epic.