When A$AP Rocky got locked up in Sweden last year, a lot of Black folks said they didn’t care about the rapper’s unfortunate situation due to his previous comments about the Black Lives Matter movement. In a 2015 interview with Time Out, Rocky was reportedly asked about not getting political in his music and here’s what he had to say, according to the publication:
An argument did arise, though, at Oxford University, when you said you didn’t want to get political in your music
I think speaking on a subject is fine but I don’t feel like I need to make songs off of it. If I felt like doing it I would. [That student’s] whole question was, “Why haven’t you [gotten political]?” I’m like, B*tch, ’cause I don’t feel like it. Kendrick is doing that already. J. Cole is doing it already. Let them deal with that sh*t. I wanna talk about the f*cked-up sh*t in my life. Not that f*cked-up sh*t I see on TV. Because I’m not there. How am I gonna talk about something I’m not helping? It’s f*cked up. It’s a touchy subject.
Do you ever feel like you’re being forced to address these issues?
They’re not forcing me to do sh*t. I’m just gonna stay Black and die. Why, because I’m Black? So every time something happens because I’m Black I gotta stand up? What the f*ck am I, Al Sharpton now? I’m A$AP Rocky. I did not sign up to be no political activist. I wanna talk about my motherf*ckin’ lean, my best friend dying, the girls that come in and out of my life, the jiggy fashion that I wear, my new inspirations in drugs! I don’t wanna talk about no f*cking Ferguson and sh*t because I don’t live over there! I live in f*cking Soho and Beverly Hills. I can’t relate. I’m in the studio; I’m in these fashion studios; I’m in these b*tches’ drawers. I’m not doing anything outside of that. That’s my life.
Rocky later tried to clear up his comments on The Breakfast Club, but what he had to say only made things worse… “I just get upset, and what I was really trying to say there was, like, yo, I just, I hate when the bandwagon stuff start. I mean, how come, you know, Black lives only matter when a police take ’em, when a police officer takes it?” Rocky reportedly said in the interview, as quoted by The Grio. “And it should be like, Black lives, it should matter when a Black life take it. You know what I mean? It should always matter. All lives matter!”
Now, after hearing that people are still upset, he’s addressing the topic once more, saying that he doesn’t feel it’s his place to rap about the Black Lives Matter movement because he hasn’t done anything to help. “I thought I addressed that before, in the past, and just to be in jail hearing people still trying to stir up some weird sh*t,” Rocky said in an interview with talk show host Kerwin Frost. “What I will say, though, in those old interviews I used to say ‘I think it’s inappropriate for me to rap about certain sh*t that I didn’t help with’… I felt like when it came to Ferguson, J. Cole went down and he actually was on the news and he actually helped. I felt like he deserved to rap about that… so, when someone asked me that in 2015 I’m like: ‘I just feel like, personally, if I’m in SoHo or I’m here I can’t even talk on that’… That’s appropriating.”
“It’s not sincere. It’s just pretentious,” he added. Watch the clip up top and let us know your thoughts. He starts talking about being locked up around the 51:38 mark.
