T-Pain: If Spotify Censors Joe Rogan, It Has To Censor Everyone

Rapper T-Pain isn’t sure why people are so angry when it comes to podcaster Joe Rogan‘s use of the N-word since the podcaster has been doing it for years — even before he signed a deal worth $100 million with Spotify.

Clips show Rogan using the racial slur two dozen times. These clips were then used by songstress India Arie to illustrate why she was withdrawing her music from Spotify.

While Rogan has since issued a statement expressing his regret over his use of the word, it was reported the streaming service had taken down roughly 70 Rogan podcasts without explanation.

Rogan and Spotify continue to address the backlash sparked when rocker Neil Young accused podcaster Joe Rogan of spreading COVID misinformation. The company has since announced new measures to address misinformation on the platform.

But in an interview with TMZ, T-Pain posed a question: are people upset about the perceived harmful content in general, or is the outrage strictly personal?

“Cancel culture only works if there’s action taken,” he said. “He’s been saying all this s–t since before the $100 million.”

T-Pain said if action was going to be taken, it should have been taken a long time ago — not now that he has money.

“Everybody knew that s—t was happening,” T-Pain explained. “It wasn’t like he wasn’t a star podcaster before all this s–t.”

T-Pain said Spotify invested in Rogan and they need to get that money back, so he doesn’t see the streaming service getting rid of him.

“The only thing they can do to get their money back is keep him on air,” 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,” T-Pain said. “If that was the case, they would take off all the s–t 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 too and they don’t give a f–k.”

T-Pain said if they want to censor one person, they have to censor everyone.

“If they want to take off the derogatory terms for African Americans, they have to take off all the derogatory s–t we say, they have to take everything off — they can’t just censor Joe Rogan,” he said. “Not just, ‘Well, that’s good, let me get back to my killing album.’ … If they take it off, they have to take all of it off, and they don’t want that.”

The rapper said nobody wants that.

“They want what’s making them uncomfortable right now,” he said. “It has to keep that same energy with everything — not just with what will make you comfortable right now.”

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek apologized to employees for the controversy and pledged to support Rogan on Sunday evening.

“I come back to centering on our mission of unlocking the potential of human creativity and enabling more than a billion people to enjoy the work of what we think will be more than 50 million creators,” Elk said in a statement to Spotify employees. “That mission makes these clashes worth the effort.”

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Follow Meg Turner on Twitter @Megnturner_ and Instagram @Megnturner

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