Bruno Mars is trending, but not for the usual reasons.

This time around it’s because he’s being accused of appropriating black culture in his music, which has people speaking up — both for and against — the superstar on Twitter and other social media platforms.

The debate was raised in a round table discussion video from The Grapevine, which can be found on YouTube.

In the discussion, one of the speakers argues that Mars is “100 percent a cultural appropriator” who “plays up his racial ambiguity to…cross genres,” according to http://www.rap-up.com.

Mars even gets slammed as a “karaoke singer” working on top of, but never adding to, “pre-existing work.” “We want our black culture from non-black bodies,” one of the round table participants adds. “And Bruno Mars is like, ‘I’ll give it to you,'” according to rap-up.com.

And this isn’t the only forum that is discussing — and dissing — the musical ability of the Hawaiian-born artist, who reportedly is of Puerto Rican, Filipino, Spanish and Jewish heritage.

“What (Bruno Mars is) doing is karaoke, basically. With ‘Finesse,’ in particular, I think he was simply copying Bell Biv DeVoe,” Meshell Ndegeocello said in a recent interview with The Root. “I think he was copying Babyface. And definitely there were some elements of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis back when they worked with Human League. I feel like there’s just all these threads running through there, but not in a genuine way.”

Much of the uproar comes from Bruno Mars’ big night at the Grammy Awards, when he swept all three of the general field categories he was nominated in — record, song and album of the year. Many believed that those awards should have instead gone to Kendrick Lamar, who topped most year-end best-of lists with “Damn.” But hip-hop artists — such as Lamar and, most famously, Kanye West — have had a hard time winning in those major categories, which usually instead award mainstream pop artists like Mars and Adele.

And we couldn’t agree more that Grammy voters made the wrong call by giving Mars all three of those awards. In particular, we’d much rather have seen Lamar or Lorde win the album of the year trophy.

In an excellent piece in Uproxx, Aaron Williams argues that the issue of whether or not Mars is a cultural appropriator is tied to “the Recording Academy not taking its history into account when voting on Album of the Year.”

“The Grammys undoubtedly made a bad decision and Bruno Mars got caught up in the whirlwind of social media fury,” Williams writes. “It’s something that practically every non-Black performer stepping into traditionally Black genres will have to face (with the exception of rock, of course). There are no easy solutions to the complex tangle of historical and cultural politics that come along with doing so, but the show must go on. All we can do is hope that next time around, the golden gramophone goes to the best artist with the best project.”

Mars fans are definitely supporting him on Twitter. Here’s some of the tweets:::

I personally think Bruno Mars is very talented and a great artist. Those who would spend time insulting and hating him because of his cultural background are the individuals with the issues, not Bruno. — Ricky Davila (@TheRickyDavila) March 9, 2018

The thought that Bruno Mars has to steal to be successful is hilarious. That man is walking raw talent. He could literally turn the national anthem into a top 40 hit. — Anthony (@AskTrillAC) March 9, 2018

Yall want Bruno Mars to make a country album? I mean cause he can do that too pic.twitter.com/5mkXKqUpjv — kam (@niquaydavis) March 9, 2018