Website of the YearJustin Bieber has been accused of cultural appropriation after debuting a new hairstyle that looks like dreadlocks.
Fans were quick to notice the Canadian singer's new hairstyle, which looks similar to the dreadlocks he was sporting five years ago.
Back then, he received backlash and was accused of cultural appropriation, with a number of people claiming the hairstyle is synonymous with black culture.
Bieber followed up the controversial post with a selfie on Monday that further showed off his new look. Many of his 171 million followers were quick to take to the post's comments to tell the singer "this ain't it".
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Advertise with NZME."Can you not?" one user wrote.
"JUSTIN PLS STOP," another added.
"You did this for what?" someone else asked.
People also took to Twitter to criticise Bieber's new choice.
"Justin Beiber has ALWAYS preyed on Black Culture, y'all just ignored it #JustinBieber #culturalappropriation #culturevulture #dreads," one user wrote.
"justin bieber gets white people dreads and yall just now realise that hes been appropriating black culture...weird," another added.
"Something is wrong, Justin Bieber is being conveniently ethnic again. Ethnic as in Black..." a third user wrote.
"Why is Justin Bieber really out in the world with some dreads fr? Like bro, your team, your WIFE was like YES this is a great decision? Yet ANOTHER shot at cultural appropriation!" another user wrote.
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Advertise with NZME."Now why did justin bieber get dreadlocks and why does he keep getting a pass," another asked.
In 2016 Bieber was criticised for sporting dreadlocks while promoting his album Purpose.
He responded to the backlash at the time with a rather bizarre post.
"'Dude you gonna do anything with your hair, or are you just gonna leave it like that, dude?' Yeah, some girl came up to me and she was like, 'I love you, Justin, but like, that's like my least favourite hairstyle of yours.'"
He captioned the clip, dated almost exactly five years ago, "Being weird is fun' if u r not weird I don't like you."
Recent claims of Bieber appropriating black culture come after he was forced to address similar criticism for including an interlude of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on his sixth studio album, Justice.
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Advertise with NZME."Being Canadian… they didn't teach us about Black history. It was just not a part of our education system," the musician explained to Bieber Nation co-founder Kristal Terrell on the app Clubhouse (via Billboard).
"I want to keep growing and learning about just all social injustices and what it looks like for me to be better, what it looks like for my friends to be better," the Yummy singer said. "And I know I have a long way to go. I love that when people are listening to my album, these conversations are coming up and they're like, 'Well, how is he going from Martin Luther King into a love song?'"
Bieber added, "I'm not trying to make a connection between me and Martin Luther King. That's why I never try to talk about social injustice or I didn't want to be the one to talk about it because I just have so much more learning to do."
