Chet Hanks, actor Tom Hanks’ son, re-launched his music career this week with the release of “White Boy Summer.”
On Tuesday (April 13), Chet, under the name “Chet Hanx,” premiered the twerk-heavy music video for his new rap song. The video begins with him drinking alcohol in his car before cutting to an outdoor party with bikini-clad women. Women begin dancing on top of him and, in a later clip, he bounces his head against a dancer’s booty while she throws it back.
The video is mostly an innocuous display of privileged partying, if not problematic or cringe-inducing for Chet’s occasional blaccent, use of faux Patois (“bad gyal”) and posturing with the Jamaican flag. However, some listeners believe that Chet drops the N-word at one point in the song.
Around the 1:42 mark, some listeners claim to hear him rap “let me see a n—a twerk,” while others believe he says “let me see you make it twerk.” Chet has not released the official lyrics to the track just yet, and his accent makes it difficult to clearly distinguish the lyric.
PopCrush has reached out to Chet Hanks’ rep for clarification regarding the song’s lyrics.
Watch the video and listen to the track, below. What do you hear?
In the early 2010s, Chet used the racist slur on a number of occasions and even defended his use of the word.
“If I say the word n—a I say it amongst people I love and who love me. If I say ‘f–k yall hatin ass n—-z;’ it’s because that’s really how I felt at the time. And I don’t accept society getting to decide what ANYBODY can or can’t say,” he wrote on social media at the time, according to VIBE.
Chet addressed his use of the slur again in 2018, blaming it on his past drug use and “trolling.”
“Low-key, like subconsciously, looking back on it now I realize I was trolling,” he told the Red Pill Podcast. “I thought, like, crazy antics and just wilding the f—k out and doing some crazy s–t was going to like spark my career.”
The song title “White Boy Summer” references Chet’s recent viral social media statement in which he declared that summer 2021 is going to be “white boy summer.”
“Hey guys, look I just wanted to tap in real quick. I just got this feeling man, that this summer is, it’s about to be a white boy summer,” he told his social media followers in an Instagram video back in March. “You know? Take it how you want.”
Chet quickly clarified that he was only specifically referring to certain white male artists: “I’m not talking about Trump, NASCAR-type white,” he explained. “I’m talking about, you know, me, Jon B, Jack Harlow-type white boy summer. You know? Let me know if you guys can vibe with that and get ready, ’cause I am.”