Canadian singer Daniel Caesar‘s new album has not sold well, and many believe it has everything to do with his defense of YesJulz — a white social media personality who caught backlash for tweeting a picture of a shirt that said “n—-s lie a lot” and asking if it would be OK if she wore the shirt.
Then in March of this year, Julz appeared on the “Easily Offended” podcast and defended the 2017 tweet that started the whole controversy.
She also accused “Black Girl Podcast” host Scottie Beam and strategist Karen Civil, both Black women, of trying to get her banned from hosting Miami’s Rolling Loud Festival, which they said was false. Julz has been accused of cultural appropriation in the past as well.
And now many are saying the comments Caesar made when he stuck up for Julz, who’s his friend, is what hurt the sales of his new LP “Case Study 01.”
“Why is that we’re allowed to be disrespectful and rude to everybody else, and when anybody returns any type of energy to us, that’s not equality,” he said on March 19 during a drunken social media rant. “I don’t want to be treated like I can’t take a joke.”
“White people have been mean to us in the past, yeah,” he went on. “But what are you going to do about it? … Are we on top of society? We’re not. You can’t win the game by choosing to not accept the winning team’s strategy.”
“Case Study 01,” dropped on June 28 and according to The Grape Juice, it’s expected to sell between 1,000 and 2,000 pure copies and between 24,000 to 27,000 units once the latest streaming numbers come in.
The low numbers come after Caesar wowed both the music industry and fans with his debut album “Freudian,” released in 2017, which earned him three Grammy nominations and a trophy for the song “Best Part” with H.E.R.
But many believe the remarks he made cancels all that out.
“Daniel Caesar told black ppl to take notes from the winning team and cancel him if we disagree…now look at his album sales,” someone tweeted on July 5.
“Daniel Caesar got all the black features in the world on the album thinking we’d forget but nobody did,” wrote another person.
“Daniel Caesar really looked at YesJulz and thought “yes, this is the hill I’m going to die on,” a third person tweeted.
“When some of y’all were hyped about that new Daniel Caesar album, i had NOT forgotten. not a single stream from me— i mean he said not to buy it. and 3,000 copies?” tweeted someone else.
