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It seems like every other celebrity in Celebritiesville feels the need to weigh in on the Joe Rogan controversy ever since he was called out for all the racist s*** he’s said on his podcast. And T-Pain is apparently no exception.
During a recent sit-down with TMZ, the “Buy You a Drank” singer said, “Cancel culture only works if there’s action taken. Let’s keep in mind, he’s been saying all this s*** since before the $100 million. Now he’s got an unlimited supply of money.
“Everybody knew that s*** was happening,” he continued. “It wasn’t like he was a small podcaster before all this s***. 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. Everybody needs to keep that same energy all the fuckin’ time, and not just when someone get a bunch of money.”
I was with him in the beginning, because I don’t believe “cancel culture” is a thing simply because it’s so rare that real and permanent action is ever taken against those supposedly “canceled,” but he loses me with this notion that just because Rogan didn’t get called out before he was popular means he shouldn’t be called at all. I mean, people didn’t know about it until they knew about it.
T-Pain insists that “everybody knew” it, but everybody didn’t know s***. Everybody wasn’t always Rogan’s audience—and still aren’t. Rogan’s popularity only means there’s a lot of unwashed dude-bros out there who get all their “expertise” from the prestigious University of Check Out My YouTube.
The point is, even if T-Pain isn’t terribly pressed about Rogan, why is he out here caping for this white man who referred to a Black neighborhood as the Planet of the Apes and being dismissive about the issue by saying it’s only happening because Rogan has money now?
“They spent $100 million on that man,” T-Pain went on to say. “The only thing they can do to get their money back is to keep him on air. It sucks to say, man. 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*** we’re saying. If that was the case, they’ll take off all the s*** 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***.”
Once again, T-Pain started out OK, but then he had to mess it up by comparing the streaming of rap lyrics to giving a platform to a man who uses it to say racist things about Black people. Nah, bruh, not on this here Black History Month.
Speaking of BHM, this isn’t the only lukewarm-at-best take T-Pain thought was hot recently.
In a separate interview with TMZ, the Florida artist said we should stop celebrating BHM.
“Stop celebrating,” he said. “Although we celebrate Black History Month, I think we should just have history. They overshot it. We don’t want our own shit, you’re separating us again. We want to be part of history and not just one month of it. Like, we want to be part of history, don’t celebrate one month for us. I’d rather everybody stop celebrating that s*** and just let us be part of history and not just, ‘y’all get paid attention to on the shortest month of the year.’”
First of all, T-Pain appears to think white people gave us BLM and designated it for February—which they didn’t.
Secondly, sure, in a colorblind America that doesn’t always default to whiteness, we could have this “all lives matter” version of history, but we don’t live in that America. We live in an America that’s trying to “cancel” Black history into oblivion by falsely calling it critical race theory—which also shouldn’t be “canceled.”
Anyway, T-Pain responded to the backlash by tweeting: “I’ll happily be the provider of a distraction from whatever yall are actually mad at because I know you’re not actually mad at me. It’s impossible. You don’t even know me so how could I have that much power over your feelings? We all need a getaway and I’ll be that if you need it.”
OK, calm down, my guy, you’re just a negro getting dragged on Twitter—you’re not Autotune Jesus sacrificing yourself for our sins.
I mean, I like T-Pain, but sometimes he’s the in-person version of people on social media who don’t really think their opinions through before hitting “send.”