“U got 72 hours to respond” — The Acolyte star Amandla Stenberg hits back at the show’s critics with a new song

Amandla Stenberg released a track in response to the criticism of her show, The Acolyte. The actress took to Instagram on Wednesday, June 19 to drop Discourse in which she criticized right-wing media outlets and addressed the "intolerable racism" that she was facing. The actor captioned the track on Instagram:

"Happy Juneteenth 🖤 and to those who are flooding me with intolerable racism— since it took me 72 hours on my laptop to make this song and video, u got 72 hours to respond. and I expect choreo!!"

The Acolyte which dropped on Disney+ on June 4 of this year is the first major Star Wars project helmed by an openly queer individual in Leslye Headland. The show received a mixed response. Despite holding up a score of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, the show still only received an audience rating of 14%.

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"I’m not goin to be the next one sent to an early grave": Amandla Stenberg

Amandla Stenberg's track began with the actor addressing a resurfaced clip from a 2018 interview with Trevor Noah regarding the film The Hate U Give. In the interview, Stenberg told Noah "white people crying actually was the goal" of the film. As per THR, many took the line from the interview out of context. The actress rapped:

"They splice lines make hate they recognize / make it look like the same propaganda they spew / cuz they conflate our pain with violence / and try to weaponize everything that we do,"

She added:

"The desperation of oppressors is rising / and now they holding onto any of thing they can use / If you rely upon misinformation / that tells me you’re afraid of the truth."

After a chorus of "We so bored don’t f**k with yo discourse", the actress talked about the bastardization and appropriation of the phrase "woke". According to her, people created the phrase to "speak truth to power." She requests people to keep an eye out for racists who use the phrase to describe anything they feel threatened by.

Amandla Stenberg referenced Childish Gambino's usage of the phrase on his 2016 track Redbone and further described the phrase as something used to recognize bigotry and the power of the community. After lashing out against the usage of the word as clickbait fodder, Amandla Stenberg sang,

"Journalists I’m looking at you / did you forget it’s your job to provide the truth? / spreading divisiveness mining the metrics and date / seem you gave up all your ethics for money and views"

She further stated,

"My sis said don’t let it get down my spirit / but I’m sick and f**kin tried of suppressing my rage / 400 years of taking their bulls**t / to compartmentalize like my ancestors had to encage,"

She concluded,

"If you don’t confront the pain that you live with / it’ll manifest as addiction disease and hate / I’ve seen the infection repressing can give ya / I’m not goin to be the next one sent to an early grave."

A black-and-white lyric video that featured Amandla Stenberg dancing to the track accompanied the track, which has amassed over 994K views on Instagram at the time of writing this article.

Apart from criticism regarding the actual placement of The Acolyte in the Star Wars universe and bad writing, the show also ran into a fair bit of criticism from certain circles. Especially following its third episode, and a recent interview with The Wrap in which Amandla Stenberg alongside Leslye Headland joked that "Star Wars is so gay already".

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The first season of The Acolyte is currently streaming on Disney+ and also stars Dafne Keen, Manny Jacinto, Charlie Barnett, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Leslye Headland's spouse Rebecca Henderson.