T-Pain shared his thoughts following Joe Rogan’s controversial comments on his Spotify show.
During an interview with Backgrid, the “Buy You a Drank” artist said if the streaming service removes Rogan for using racially insensitive language, they would be forced to remove everyone who used derogatory terms in their content.
When asked if Spotify would remove Rogan’s show, the “I’m Sprung” rapper said that would never happen after spending millions of dollars investing into his platform.
“They spent $100 million on that man. The only thing they can do to get their money back is to keep him on-air,” he said. “It sucks to say, man, he said.”
“The only thing you can do is shut down the entire company because they have their priorities in their mind. They aren’t worried about what the f**k we’re saying,” the Autotune founder continued. “If that was the case, they’ll take off all the shit we saying about killing each other. We understand what the message is, and we understand what we want, but you gotta understand their side of it is, too, and they don’t give a f**k.”
“If they want to take off the derogatory terms for African-Americans, they have to take off all the derogatory sh** we say,” he explained. “They gotta take everything off. They can’t just censor Joe Rogan and just be like, ‘Well, that’s good, let me get back to my muthaf**kin’ killing album.’ If they take it off, they gotta take all of it off, but they don’t want that. Nobody wants that.”
The Tallahassee native asked if the podcaster’s racist comments were the main reason people were angry with him or if the outrage was strictly personal.
“Cancel culture only works if there’s action taken,” he told TMZ. “Let’s keep in mind; he’s been saying all this sh** since before the $100 million. Now he’s got an unlimited supply of money.”
Though the rapper-singer believes Rogan should be canceled for using the racial slur, he questioned the existence of cancel culture when Rogan made the comments years before his deal.
“Everybody knew that sh** was happening. It wasn’t like he was a small podcaster before all this sh**,” he explained. “All this shit was public, and all this shit was goin’ on. We shoulda stopped him a long time ago.”
“We should have kept the same energy a long time ago,” he added. “Everybody needs to keep that same energy all the f****n’ time, and not just when someone get a bunch of money.”
A video of the 54-year-old using the N-word multiple times on his podcast show resurfaced on the internet last week. The footage reportedly compiled past episodes — years before he signed a $100 million deal with Spotify.
Since then, Rogan has apologized for the controversial remarks. He claimed the clips were taken “out of context” and that his views on using the word have changed, Sis2Sis reported.
“It looks f**king horrible. Even to me,” Rogan said. “I know that to most people. There is no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast. And I agree with that now. I haven’t said it in years,” the podcaster said in an Instagram video.
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After Spotify removed 70 of Rogan’s episodes last week, the chief executive Daniel Ek informed employees that the company wouldn’t pull the podcaster’s show from the streaming service. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope,” he said in an internal memo acquired from The Washington Post.
Full text of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s note to staff: pic.twitter.com/3FHlmzV3UW
— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) February 7, 2022
