The Trial of Kaytranada

What we lose (and gain) by scrutinizing Black men’s dating preferences.

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And so it's happened again: a vibrant and vulnerable social media identity wiped away with the stroke of a key. This time it's Grammy-winning DJ and producer Kaytranada, who, recently, abruptly deactivated his Twitter account. (Yes I know what it's called, but the only X I recognize is of the Lil Nas variety.)

Twitter accounts come, go and come again in a cycle resembling the Buddhist concept of samsara — constant spawning, dying and respawning with little to show for it. Besides, there's probably no good reason for anyone to spend time on Twitter in 2025, except maybe romance scammers, AI porn enthusiasts and stateside Putinistas. But the rapture of Kaytranada's Twitter is fascinating all the same due to the putative reason for it: He was being ruthlessly bullied for dating white men.

The Backlash Against Kaytranada’s Dating Life

Let's acknowledge the unknowability of Kaytranada's reason for deleting his Twitter presence, of course, but here's the context. In late May, as westerly winds carried the musk cloud from D.C. Pride up through New England, Kaytranada posted some photos on his account. By "some photos," I mean S-tier thirst traps showing off chiseled arms and stacked shoulders that point to either a gnarly gym regimen or his investment in some sort of weighted turntables. A torrent of thirst inevitably followed, and like D'Angelo before him after the "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" video dropped, Kaytranada instantly went from a quirky musical phenom to an object of parasocial lust.

As anyone who's followed D'Angelo's arc can attest, there's a frisson of excitement that comes with that kind of attention, but it comes at an insidious cost. Attaining sex symbol status appears to broaden a celebrity's appeal, but it actually flattens them and sands away everything that isn't carnal. So when Black Twitter trained its lustful gaze on Kaytranada, the nuance of who he is got stripped away. It was suddenly all that mattered. For every swooning compliment, there was a warning: "Y'all know he like white boys, right?" Kay volleyed with some of the commentariat, which confirms that he was consuming more of the dialogue than is probably healthy for him.

By Sunday morning came a tweet: "KAYTRANADA DELETED HIS TWITTER LMAOOOOOO." The user's tone is flippant, but the content doesn't strike me as celebratory. It's actually kind of wistful. The "He's for the Whites" trials follow Salem rules, so once accused, there is no clear path to acquittal. Perhaps realizing this led to Kaytra's decision to back out of the conversation. Naturally, the retreat only ossified the perception, a conclusion owed to the conventional wisdom about hit dogs and their tendency to holler.

So where does this latest game of Spot the Twink Slayer leave us? Are Black celebrities allowed obligated to date within their race in order to protect their brands? Is there a future in which someone's dating preferences are a picayune matter, and is that actually the future we want?

To explore why the Kaytranada case is especially interesting, let's first talk about the man behind the moniker.

Community Expectations about Race and Identity

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Montreal, 32-year-old Louis Celestin first made a name for himself with a string of buzzy beat tapes self-released under the name Kaytradamus. The anticipation had been building for roughly four years by the time the newly rechristened Kaytranada released his debut studio album, 99.9%, in 2016. The album fulfilled the promise of those first beat tapes and was met with rapturous acclaim.

By the time his second album, Bubba, dropped five years later, Kaytranada had built an impressive roster of artists with whom he collaborated or remixed. And despite a sound that draws heavily on Chicago house and breakbeat, Kaytra made huge inroads as a hip hop producer, with credits including Chance the Rapper, Mick Jenkins and fellow Haitian Mach-Hommy. His Grammy wins for Bubba — including Best Dance/Electronic Album solidified his reputation. That he accomplished all of this while deciding whether and how to address his sexuality is all the more impressive.

“Attaining sex symbol status appears to broaden a celebrity’s appeal, but it actually flattens them and sands away everything that isn’t carnal. ”

What makes Kaytranada's particular vulnerability in this controversy so striking is how openly he's struggled with questions of identity and belonging throughout his career. In a candid 2020 interview with GQ, he revealed the extent of his alienation: "I was like, Yeah, I'm gay. But am I really gay? 'Cause I don't have the culture down. … It was really hard to deal with." The comment reveals a man grappling not just with his sexuality, but with whether he even fits into the communities that might be expected to embrace him.

This sense of displacement makes perfect sense when you consider his background. As a Haitian-Canadian artist who came up through Montreal's overwhelmingly white electronic music scene, Kaytranada had little exposure to the rich traditions of Black American gay culture that inform so much of the criticism directed at him. His deep involvement in the Canadian music industry — a world where he was often the only Black face in the room — hardly equipped him with the cultural fluency that his critics now demand. That he's managed to become one of the most celebrated producers of his generation while navigating this complex identity terrain only underscores how unfair it is to expect him to also serve as a cultural ambassador for communities he's still learning to understand.

Kaytranada's ordeal fits into a reliable and familiar pattern that has ensnared numerous Black gay celebrities in recent years. Steve Lacy has faced relentless criticism since 2017 for admitting he won't date Black men because they were "always my competitors" growing up in Compton, California. Jarrod Carmichael’s comments about Black men weren’t as pointed after he came out in an Emmy-winning standup special. But he went on the attack after his Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show highlighted his white boyfriend and hinted at a potential raceplay fetish.

The scrutiny is no different for straight Black celebrities. Jonathan Majors’ auspicious career screeched to a halt after his white ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, accused him of assault, leading to the demise of multiple projects he was attached to. If Majors thought hard-launching a code-compliant new partner could turn the tides, he faced a rude awakening. When he showed up to the first day of his criminal trial accompanied by Meagan Good, it smacked of a publicity stunt. Even the beloved Quinta Brunson sparked mockery when clips surfaced of her saying she "barely knows any white people” just after she announced the dissolution of her marriage to white husband Kevin Anik. 

To understand why these controversies ignite such fierce reactions, it's important to acknowledge that the anger isn't irrational. For many observers, interracial dating preferences carry symbolic weight that extends far beyond individual choice. The entertainment industry has long rewarded Black performers who demonstrate comfort with white audiences and partners, treating such relationships as evidence of crossover appeal. When Berry Gordy reportedly encouraged his Motown stars to “date white,” and record labels pushed Black artists to "broaden their appeal," the message was clear: success meant distancing yourself from Blackness.

Those dynamics haven't disappeared; they've just become more subtle. In an industry where "urban" remains code for Black and where streaming algorithms still struggle with genre categorization, the pressure to signal mainstream acceptability persists. For some Black observers, seeing prominent artists consistently choose white partners feels like a continuation of those assimilationist pressures, a suggestion that dating within the race is what unsuccessful people do while the truly accomplished graduate to whiter pastures.

The concerns run deeper than professional strategy, touching on fundamental questions about representation and community solidarity. Within Black gay circles, where visibility has historically been scarce, there's an implicit expectation that public figures should model the kind of relationships that validate the community's worth. When someone like Kaytranada appears to favor white partners, it can feel like a rejection not just of individual Black men, but of the entire notion that Black love is worthy of celebration.

There's also the painful reality that colorism within gay culture often privileges lighter skin and European features, creating hierarchies that can make Black men feel unwanted in their own community. Against that backdrop, a successful Black artist's preference for white partners can read as an endorsement of those exclusionary standards, a signal that even someone with the power to choose differently has internalized the same prejudices that make ordinary Black gay men feel invisible.

Yet this empathetic understanding of the backlash shouldn't obscure how destructive and counterproductive it ultimately becomes. The harassment that drove Kaytranada off social media represents a cruel irony: a community punishing someone who arguably needs its support and kinship the most. Here's an artist who has openly struggled with feeling alienated from both straight Black culture and mainstream gay culture, who has described the profound difficulty of figuring out where he belongs—and the response is to create yet another space where he can't be authentic.

Kaytranada performs in concert at Sonar Festival on June 17, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain. (Christian Bertrand)

The Toll of Public Scrutiny

The phenomenon reveals how parasocial relationships have become so intense and delusional that people react to the personal choices of a stranger the way they would react to similar choices by an actual friend. Kaytranada's dating life becomes a referendum on his loyalty, his politics, his worthiness of support—as if fans have some legitimate stake in who he sleeps with. The result is a surveillance state where every Instagram story, every red carpet appearance, every casual mention of a partner gets scrutinized for signs of racial apostasy.

“The harassment that drove Kaytranada off social media represents a cruel irony: a community punishing someone who arguably needs its support and kinship the most.”

This kind of policing forces Black celebrities into a different kind of closet, one where they must hide not their sexuality but their romantic autonomy. The pressure to perform community loyalty through partner selection creates new forms of inauthenticity, where genuine attraction becomes indistinguishable from political signaling. For someone like Kaytranada, who's already navigating multiple marginalizations and complex questions of belonging, this additional layer of scrutiny can be suffocating.

Perhaps most troubling is how this approach fundamentally misunderstands what we should want from Black celebrities in the first place. The impulse to treat them as an elevated class — cultural ambassadors whose every choice carries symbolic weight — ignores the reality that in many cases, they're just regular Black folks trying to navigate a double consciousness that only becomes more stressful and taxing as fame and success increase. To truly enjoy what Kaytranada has to offer as an artist, fans need to divorce themselves from the idea that his personal life should serve their political needs.

The cost of our current approach extends far beyond any individual controversy. When we create environments where Black artists feel they must choose between community acceptance and personal authenticity, we risk losing the very voices and perspectives that make our culture richer. For Kaytranada, whose music and visibility has mattered to countless young Black queer people, the loss of his social media presence represents more than just another deleted account — it's a reminder of how quickly a community can become a cage, and how the very people we claim to protect often end up as casualties of that protection.