Podcast Company Deletes Entire Kanye West Episode

The host of Drink Champs, N.O.R.E., continues to apologize for hosting rapper Kanye West on his podcast this week.

West, who asks the public only to refer to him as Ye, argued that George Floyd died of drug abuse in 2020 during his appearance on the show.

“He said a prayer for eight minutes, they hit him with the fentanyl,” Ye said. “If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”

For context, a chief medical examiner listed Floyd’s death as a homicide and noted the amount of fentanyl in his blood could have been "fatal under circumstances.”

Floyd’s family says it's considering suing Ye for his comments.

N.O.R.E. quickly apologized for hosting Ye, telling the Breakfast Club, “I support freedom of speech, I support anybody, you know, not being sensitive, but I do not support anybody being hurt… I apologize to the George Floyd family. I apologize to anybody that was hurt by Kanye West’s comments.”

But, of course, apologies rarely suffice. On Tuesday, the show deleted the entire episode with Ye and removed all mentions of his appearance.

Drink Champs representative released the following statement to the Hollywood Reporter:

Drink Champs prides itself on its ability to allow a free flow of ideas within the hip hop community. That being said, unfortunately, the recent interview with Kanye West contained false and hurtful information regarding the circumstances surrounding the murder of George Floyd. Integrity is very important and we don’t want to promote false narratives on our platform. Our goal is to celebrate the culture. Therefore, we had no choice but to remove the episode from distribution. We apologize to the family of Mr. Floyd and anyone else hurt by this episode.

Similarly, LeBron James' HBO program "The Shop "scrapped a recorded episode with Ye days early. Maverick Carter, who produces the show, said James could not attach his name to Ye's "dangerous" rhetoric.

The hosts knew coming in that Ye would make controversial statements. Ye's entire press tour stems from him declaring "death con 3" on Jewish people. (Ye says because he's black that he cannot be antisemitic, a bizarre statement in and of itself.) But instead of pushing back, LeBron and N.O.R.E. let him speak and then deleted the episodes.

Conversely, NewsNation host Chris Cuomo hosted Ye on Monday and allowed for back-and-forth dialogue. Credit where it's due:

During the interviews, Ye accused a "Jewish underground media mafia” of silencing him. He says he purchased the social media platform Parler so he could speak freely despite the "mafia" attacking him.