With tracks lamenting over climate change, mental health, and teen drug use, and within her public statements concerning feminism and animal rights, Billie has indeed found importance by giving the world hope as the socially conscious voice of so-called “Generation Z”. Billie is obviously not at fault for the sins of her parents - whatever those may be - but from her mother’s words one can clearly see the level of disconnect between her family and the rest of the original Highland Park community, not only materially but psychologically as well. How could this be? So here are some interviews where Eilish mentioned her hometown. One also needs to keep in mind that this gentrification - in fact, the gentrification of several Los Angeles neighborhoods - was being supported by political policies. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, even more vicious investors dove in and began taking advantage of both the hundreds of newly-foreclosed homes and emerging new vibe at the expense of the original working-class Latinx residents, who also started to see their rents rise as el barrio began its transformation into a hipster utopia. She gained a following in 2016, when she released her single "Ocean Eyes" on SoundCloud, subsequently released on the record labels Darkroom and Interscope Records. As the demographic forcefully changes from proletarian to rich, brown or black to white, renter to homeowner, the sense of home starts to disappear as bourgeois newcomers seldom acknowledge the previous residents or the culture they’ve already established. Near the middle and highlighted in red ink. But, he considers the 5,000 trips he took as an Uber driver as teaching him the most about L.A. © 2021 Los Angeleno. It is also known that around this time Highland Park became somewhat of a center for house-flipping, that being the purchase of houses in lower-income areas for pennies on the dollar in order to resell at a much higher price to higher income residents. She is the daughter of teacher, actress, and screenwriter Maggie Baird, and construction worker Patrick O'Connell, who worked part-time as an actor, appearing in films like Iron Man(2008). Why is it that an artist who is so desperate to be seen as socially conscious never brings up the class struggle going on in her own backyard? Blackest, in that she immerses in aspects distinctly associated with contemporary black culture (trap music, streetwear, neck chains, black vernacular speech, etc.) Is it any surprise that she seemed to lambast hip hop culture only a few days after her Grammy win? ““Nobody really lived there” yes they damn did. Her music, like her neighborhood, is a mash-up. wypipo think no one lives there until they move in. It just kinda sucks because Highland Park is already losing its culture, and she comes in bringing more of the loss with her.”. “That type of language is problematic. The rappers Travis Scott and Lil Uzi Vert have a similar fashion sense to Eilish, and their music overtly interpolates rock. The celebration of pop star extraordinaire Billie Eilish as the defiant “socially conscious voice of Generation Z” is being used to manipulate the narrative of the anti-gentrification struggle in her home neighborhood of Highland Park, Los Angeles. Eilish remains as unique and enigmatic as she seems from a distance, but also is presented very much like a normal Los Angeles teenager, getting her driver’s license, dreaming of a matte black Dodge Challenger and texting with a largely absent boyfriend. Finneas has also appeared in shows including TV shows like Glee, Modern Family, Life Inside Out, Bad Teacher, and more. featured stories, events and announcements, Start typing to see results or hit ESC to close. No one should doubt the ability of artists to battle injustice when they have the power to do so. https://www.thelist.com/156033/the-stunning-transformation-of-billie-eilish Attempts were even made to evict Hussle’s own Marathon Clothing store by the authorities on the basis that it provided a haven for gang members, when it served as something of a community center. Needing to appear palatable to White America’s consumers and their 11-year old daughters, any real “wokeness” she displays must be controlled. Baird elaborated on a time she and Billie’s father fixed up and sold their neighbor’s house in a 2014 documentary: To quote a user on Twitter, the focus isn’t the backstory, but the ways in which transplants (gentrifiers and house-flippers) commonly view the homes and communities of the working class: beautiful things ruined by their former inhabitants which now need to be fixed and controlled. Working-class communities are often built around interdependence on one another, gentrification redesigns the neighborhood around capital. Making the sprawl of Los Angeles a little smaller. It’s not like, ‘Highland Park is Where Billie Eilish Grew Up.’ It’s so much more than that. Billie Eilish spent most of her life in Highland Park, Los Angeles. What is also highly significant in this commotion is the extent by which the Tweets of outrage by Highland Park youth depict an over-arching psychological effect of gentrification: the feeling of being an outsider in one’s own homeland. The left only became critical of her when she appeared to backpedal on that praxis by becoming fully immersed in the same corporate-capitalist paradigm against which her past words and actions indicated she was rebelling. To an outsider looking in, the whole notion of a class struggle being actively fought in Highland Park simply doesn’t exist. She said she saw a lot of her friends talk about it online. “Highland Park already has its own name for itself. “But then, she said something to the effect that she was here ‘before anyone lived there.’ People have always lived here. Pop Singer from Highland Park, Los Angeles, California, USA. That’s where AppleTV+’s Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry (out February 26) begins — clips of home video with her now-producer brother Finneas O’Connell right before their worlds exploded. Highland Park, Los Angeles Billie Eilish was born and raised in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Granted, the standard counterpoint would be her age, that it is impossible for a 15-year old to fully understand the economic and political situation in her home neighborhood (one can see how quickly the conversation changes from gentrification to whether or not it is morally correct to hold a naïve teenager responsible for her words). And they help Compton in that kind of sense,” Stephanie says. If you'd like to upload content to the library which is in line with the aims of the site or will otherwise be of interest to libcom users, please check out our guides to submitting library/history articles and tagging articles. Her full name is Billie Eilish "Pirate" Baird O'Connell. What are the Perks and Challenges of Climbing Eagle Rock? Eilish largely co-wrote the album with her brother Finneas O’Connell, who produced its music at his small bedroom studio in Highland Park, Los Angeles. It should be noted that neither Billie’s PR nor popular gossip (“tea”) sites responded to this controversy, even though it arguably has far greater implications than Billie’s Instagram posts about mink fur or words against Lady Gaga’s meat dress. 8. I think it’s really cute. In hip hop, for instance, it is very common for artists to heavily associate their artistry with their hometowns (e.g. Billie Eilish is one of America’s most famous musicians now and she won five Grammys in 2020. Ever since she came on to the pop music scene in 2016, Billie Eilish has unquestionably portrayed herself as the “authentic” alternative to what the public understands as the plastic and generic pop star. Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell grew up in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California. Community Spotlight: Plants and Candles and Thai Food, Oh My! Billie made that record with her brother and creative partner, producer Finneas O’Connell, in their parents’ house in Highland Park, Los Angeles. In most cases, the music reflects as well as publicizes the issues and overall environment of the artist’s hometown, as was the case with early 90s Gangsta Rap showcasing gang violence and police brutality in Southern California, or 2010s so-called “mumble rap” highlighting opioid abuse which is very common in the American South. Workers Say Santa Monica Hotel Violates COVID-19 Safety Rules, California to Reserve 10% of Vaccine Supply for Teachers, Child Care Workers, Only Second Doses Available Next Week at Large-Scale County-Run Vaccination Sites, At Current Pace, L.A. County Vaccinations Will Take Until 2022, Stock Your Gourmet Pantry at This Culver City Art Gallery-Turned-Conscious Market, Pandemic’s Other Toll: Record Number of Stolen Cars, Murders in Los Angeles Hit Highest Level in Over a Decade, Photos: How a Trump Rally in Downtown Became a Violent Mirror to D.C. Insurrection, The Story Behind the Hot Dog Vendor at the Trump Rally Downtown. When it comes to how her direct experiences have shaped Billie’s authentic music and image, any talk of Highland Park’s gentrification is almost completely obscured. “Billie Eilish isn’t stressing over the Grammys. All Rights Reserved. But they are culturally consumed, primarily, as hip-hop artists, with little chance of earning a top prize at the Grammys.” On a more striking note, it is this duality which ultimately becomes the basis of white chauvinism, with Billie’s basic white girl image inexplicably enabling her to become a “better” black woman than actual black women, since within her expropriated blackness - as pointed out by Kornhaber - she is able to incorporate a sense of universalism (“her music is different”). i can’t go back to my hood without being gawked at”@aiurare. During the gentrification process, this belittling of pre-gentrified communities is often defined by paradox: while gentrifiers may disregard the neighborhood’s original culture, they also hold a sense of envy. Billie Eilish is a 17-year-old American singer, songwriter, and model. It would be an understatement to say that this culture expects its artists to be grassroots and write from their own personal experiences, hence the significant emphasis on paying tribute to the city of one’s upbringing. “Highland Park already has its own name for itself. They think I’m just a little rich girl from L.A.”– NME, March 2019. With the exception of Billie entering Galco’s, a Latino-run old grocery shop, no relics of pre-gentrified Highland Park are shown in the segment; her natural habitat is clearly meant to be the world of sleek cafés and vintage shops. Not Highland Park. SHE may have won the 2020 Brit Award for International Solo Female Artist, but Billie Eilish still lives at home with her parents. What is startling about her case in particular is how her celebrity (partially fueled, of course by, her own words) has been used to seize the narrative. A Roundup of Eastside News & Info A native of Highland Park now has the No. It wasn’t a great neighborhood and nobody really lived there. Keeping to her roots, Eilish still lives in her 1,208 square foot family home in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, with her parents. “It’s kinda like a little hipster block party, almost. How out-of-place is it for a teenage girl who has become pop music’s progressive counter-power to make proclamations littered with overtones of casual bourgeois chauvinism? Could these quotes have been misconstrued? More about Billie Eilish childhood home in Los Angeles home below, as well as the scoop on her brother’s new pad. There remains a certain politics of place when it comes to public figures representing a particular city or region. “So that’s why I feel like if she is repping the Highland Park community, then she should do something for the community. Needless to say, when these comments resurfaced on Twitter in the fall of 2019, they caused a firestorm among Highland Park youth prompting hundreds of tweets: “f*** you @billieeilish , highland park was popping way before you. As of now, in 2020, Highland Park remains caught in the middle of a class war more heated than ever, with realtors and landlords continuing to force locals into homelessness (including 250 homeless students) and the LAPD establishing a new foot patrol specifically aimed at protecting gentrifier businesses from anti-gentrification activists. What seemed to anger the young Highland Park residents on Twitter the most about Billie’s “nobody really lived there” and “we moved there when it was affordable” comments was how they are indicative (intentionally or not) of these attitudes. “And then over time tons of stores and little shops popped up.” It’s called gentrification sweetheart. She frolics down York Boulevard, one of Highland Park’s major streets (and a major epicenter of gentrification), until she arrives at Donut Friend, a vegan donut shop frequently targeted by local activist boycotts and vandalisms on account of being a “gentrifier business”. Every aspect of this profile is bent on portraying her as a down-to-earth homegirl. None of several people we talked to could remember the source of the controversial interview that seemingly everyone had heard. The 18-year-old singer resides in a two-bedroom bungalow in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles with her mum Maggie and her dad Patrick. However, there is only so much capital can strangle a population before it is met with resistance. I’m sure she meant no ill will — I hope — to the community she joined. 17 years. What could have featured Billie paying tribute to el barrio played out as an advertisement for Hipsterland. Even without a formal education, Billie comes off as quite insightful throughout this entire talk. What is the political and economic environment of this place? When Billie said to NME: “…[T]o see young people taking part in peaceful protests and not obeying is beautiful,” she did not mean the ongoing demonstrations by Highland Park teens, or the vandalisms against gentrifier businesses by outlaw activists. Billie is a lot smarter than people give her credit for. The reoccurring trope is that Billie is an outsider, a transplant. The celebration of pop star extraordinaire Billie Eilish as the defiant “socially conscious voice of Generation Z” is being used to manipulate the narrative of the anti-gentrification struggle in her home neighborhood of Highland Park, Los Angeles. It could be argued that Billie was disadvantaged growing up, and being disadvantaged should exempt her from responsibility regarding this issue. It’s very homely, very comfortable.”. Both her parents are amateur musicians. Serious discussion of class struggle is not on the menu. There were gunshots and shit, y’know — it was really sketchy. They are aware of the pop phenom but hesitant to admit she is one of them. We moved here only because it was affordable. The plan was to crowdfund from each community and give residents an ownership stake in every project created in their neighborhood.” This was all in response to the multitude of policies driven by LA mayor Eric Garcetti for a so-called “revitalization”, a perpetual selling out the city to high-end investors throughout the 2010s. Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images When she was younger, Eilish worked at a nearby stable in exchange for riding lessons, since her family couldn't afford to pay for them upfront , but eventually stopped because she felt others looked down on her for being "the poor girl around the stable." (Granted, this is someone who has always insisted she refuses to let the industry take advantage of her.) It’s for this reason she went against both her label and PR team in order to publicly memorialize XXXTentacion: she knew that despite his multiple domestic abuse charges and history of misogynistic violence she would gain far more clout from attaching herself to him than remaining quiet on his passing. It is incredibly degrading to refer to a community on the verge of liquidation as “nobodies”, to deny their existence and deny their current resistance. Money was poured into several so-called “development” projects made solely for the wealthy at the cost of the working poor, proving again how dictatorships of the bourgeoisie do not care about the poor and suffering. I don’t know, just something that can help the whole, you know?”. What L.A. residents need to know about how coronavirus is affecting their neighborhoods and daily life. Added to that, her family is almost storybook in their closeness and quirks. Highland Park already has its own name for itself. Its homes and apartment buildings, stuffed onto small lots, include every California architectural style. And it is very safe to say that Billie, at the start of her career, presented herself as someone who was going to bring the music industry to its knees by speaking truth to power and actively challenging many of the existing industry norms, which is what drew in that infatuation from the left to begin with. According to a report from 2002, there had already been plans to gentrify Figueroa (one of Highland Park’s main streets) with the creation of an arts district and a Gold Line metro stop, the metro stop being completed in 2003. Seniors Remind Us of the Importance of Our Vote, Hollywood’s New Public Art is a 5-Story Portrait Made of Sequins, Report Ranks L.A. as 10th Most Expensive City in the World, Attention Shoppers: The East Hollywood Target Opened Sooner Than Expected. However, at the same time, they insist the original residents do not know their own self-worth and remain “backwards” and “underdeveloped” despite their ability to charm the gentrifying class with their cultural ornaments. Since the original residents are of the underclass, it is assumed they won’t notice (of course, they do notice, but this does little to stop the process). Flipping houses for “the highest price one could possibly get” to “lovely couples with no criminal past” often precedes future developers swooping in to resell affordable houses at exorbitantly higher prices, with banks following suit. “Yeah, she grew up here, a lot of people did,” says Gloria Martinez, a senior at Franklin High School while walking to Starbucks with her friends. She is from Highland Park but not from Highland Park. Hope nobody be listening to this hipster a** c*** cause I sure won’t no more” said one user by the handle @mon_ixa. Attire-wise she is adorned with an oversized neon top, sport pants, a bucket hat, and a long chain which all give off a “hood” vibe. Early in her career, she based the bulk of her image on the notion she was DIY, anti-corporate, and anti-industry. According to several interviews, Billie’s parents bought a house and moved to the neighborhood from heavily-gentrified Silver Lake sometime in 2001 (historically speaking, this would have been right at the time when local politicians were lying down plans to gentrify). A headline from LA Magazine proclaims: “Highland Park’s Billie Eilish Sets a New Record for Grammy Nominations”; another from The LA Times in June of 2019 reads: “Billie Eilish, who came up in Highland Park, has nine tracks among the 200 most consumed songs so far this year.” The attachment she has to her location is pivotal, and is arguably best articulated in a mini-documentary by Complex (via Pigeons & Planes) recorded in late 2017. It’s not like, ‘Highland Park is Where Billie Eilish Grew Up.’ It’s so much more than that. A whole a** community actually. Generation Z is a squad that came to age amidst the phenomenon of a ‘filtered reality,’ in which the many facets of individual existence are constantly curated, edited, and refined. Almost a year after his passing, suspicions concerning the link between Hussle’s activism and murder remain, as the LAPD had been monitoring his activity in the weeks leading up to his death. organic restaurants. Landmarks in Miniature, Gentrifying Highland Park’s War on the Middle Class. Once an innocent white girl becomes a white comrade she inevitably forfeits the ability to ever again be seen as “the whitest girl in the room”, given how one loses all innocence once their politics become overtly radical. It would be a mistake to reduce this all down to a simple matter of cultural appropriation, since there is a larger agenda at stake. It is precisely this need to maintain the second half of her image as a basic white girl which requires Billie to keep a certain distance from people of color and their issues. It’s right there in the Good Book. There’s this one street called York, which is kinda where everything is. And its corridors feature an artsy-gritty mix of fancy coffee shops, downscale restaurants, and tattoo parlors, sometimes all on the same block. Later she is interviewed about her upbringing, telling the story of how her actor/musician parents homeschooled her so she and her brother could focus on music, dancing, and acting instead of standard academics. Hussle’s own Crenshaw hood was heavily affected as there were plans to build nearly a thousand high-end developments in preparation for the 2028 Olympics. She is said to be a voice of conscience amid the late 2010s culture of face tuning, pill popping, and flexing. Her life was spent in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park, which, since the late 2000s, has been the site of an ongoing struggle against gentrification. The singer's middle name, Eilish, was originally meant to be her first name, while Pirate (proposed by her brother Fin… Though nearly every article written about Billie has mentioned her residence (which is always “Highland Park”, seldom just “Los Angeles”), it is Los Angeles-based media in particular that has made a piercing effort to showcase the special connection she holds to her neighborhood. Her mother is an actress, teacher, and screenwriter, while her dad is an actor and construction worker. From the point-of-view of the original residents, this is nothing more than degradation, especially when factoring in the importance of cultural artifacts such as food and fashion in maintaining the sense of togetherness. It’s not huge, it’s this little area. We moved there when it was affordable. Their most famous resident doesn’t represent el barrio but gentrification station. A much more glaring - and often overlooked - example can be seen in the controversy surrounding her feature on the track “Sirens” from Denzel Curry’s 2018 TA13OO album. Emilia Nolasco, a fellow senior at Franklin High, says the trouble started after Eilish said something negative about Highland Park in an interview that rubbed the mostly-Latino neighborhood the wrong way. Communal spaces are re-imagined into commercial spaces, homes which were once upheld as places for families are now upheld only by how much they can profit investors. He wrote the song Ocean Eyes that was sung by his sister Billie Eilish and got over 170 million streams. “Dr. She stated in an interview with NME: “Bro, teenagers know more about the country that we’re living in right now than anybody.” Regardless of her age, or whether or not her 2017 comments were made from ignorance or malice, it is obvious her young mind must have been conditioned to think in that manner. In an interview from 2018, Billie made more disparaging remarks towards Highland Park by stating, “A lot of people who don’t live in L.A. think that in order to live here you have to be rich and live in some really nice neighborhood and have a lot of money. The local proletarian Latinx culture which had defined the area for decades was being taken over, erased, and destroyed in place of overpriced bars, coffee houses, and trendy vegan or fad diet restaurants. Billie Eilish started releasing music when she was 14 years old. Four L.A. We moved there when it was affordable. “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.” – Luke 4:24. According to an article from the LA Times written soon after his assassination: "In the months before Hussle was gunned down in front of his clothing store in late March, the rapper was working to bring economic development to the blighted blocks around Slauson and Crenshaw Boulevard, but on his own terms. Whitest, in that she fits the archetype of a “basic white girl” complete with bad girl empowerment anthems, melancholy attitude, neon hair, flat indie chick whisper vocals, and so on (as one black female Twitter user pointed out, Billie can appropriate Blackness everywhere except for that [black female] singing voice). She’s busy worrying about the end of the world,” says a hyperbolic headline from the LA Times published last December. RELATIONSHIP DETAILS BELOW ⤵ She became famous in 2016 when she released the song “Ocean Eyes.” The song peaked at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 2019. These young Highland Park residents didn’t find Billie’s comments to be merely offensive, but oppressive. the comunidad was existent, vibrant, and brown before y’all whites decided to displace everyone there. “She’s someone who grew up here her whole life, and as someone who also grew up here her whole life, it’s like — she should integrate more into the community,” Kimberly says. It wasn’t a popular place at all, then over time, tons of stores and little shops popped up, and it’s huge now, and kinda popping, which is weird. Once again, the narrative presented here - intentionally or not - is that gentrifiers serve as rescuers, with the assumption that working-class people of color are unable to resolve issues of gun violence and poverty on their own, or that anything they created before gentrification took over is irrelevant. Born on December 18, 2001, in Highland Park, Los Angeles… It is not unusual for proponents of gentrification to legitimize the phenomenon by pushing the idea that the gentrifying class holds some kind of progressive ideals or lifestyles which the original working-class residents do not, or that gentrification itself brings in more ethical and sustainable enterprise, e.g. Who is Billie Eilish? Speak the truth.” stated user @abbymmunguia. As of 2021, Billie Eilish is possibly single. Regardless of the actual circumstances surrounding her upbringing, publications were eager to prop Billie up as the de facto “face” of Highland Park as her career was taking off. Interscope’s reaction was nothing out of the ordinary; one only needs to look at White America’s backlash against Colin Kaepernick and his kneeling during the national anthem a few years prior to see how standing against systematic racism can tarnish a reputation. “She is from Highland Park, and maybe she came through before a lot of the neighborhood changed for people who are natives of Highland Park,” she says. Social practice cannot be subtracted from “subversiveness”. A (Sometimes Goofy) Guide to Recreating the Theme Park Experience at Home, Meet the Kiwi Transplant Preserving L.A. Is Billie Eilish married or single, and who is she dating now? Her parents originally wanted her first name to be Eilish after watching a documentary on conjoined twins but decided to call her Billie in … Tony Pierce is the former Blog Editor for the LA Times and KPCC. Not right now, at least. Gilles Dauve reflects on the pandemic crisis and its consequences. This is the “new” Highland Park resident: a white face coming from a home-owning family of cultured Hollywood actors whose overall lifestyle is unconventional and hip, and who is made for material success. ▶ Get 'recent posts' refreshed more regularly Billie Eilish House Los Angeles. The answer of course isn’t self-flagellation but solidarity. Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell (born December 18, 2001) is an American singer and songwriter. The same pop establishment which her success was supposed to have subverted has now rewarded her with five Grammys, a performance at the Oscars, a coveted James Bond theme song, and more hype than most artists see in their lifetimes. A senior at the local Franklin High School remarked: “Yeah, she grew up here, a lot of people did. Billie Eilish performing live at The Hi Hat in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California, on Thursday, August 10, 2017.
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