When A$AP Rocky was locked up in Sweden over the summer for assault, many in the Black community took to social media to support him.
Others brought up his previous comments about the Black Lives Matter movement during an interview and decided not to support him.
The fallout came when Rocky spoke with Time Out New York and was asked if he felt compelled to address political issues.
“They’re not forcing me to do sh–,” he said then. “I’m just going to stay black and die. Why, because I’m black? So every time something happens because I’m black I got to stand up? What the f–k am I, Al Sharpton now? I’m A$AP Rocky. I did not sign up to be no political activist.”
“I wanna talk about my motherf—in’ 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–king Ferguson and sh–because I don’t live over there. I live in f–king Soho and Beverly Hills. I can’t relate.”
Rocky walked back those comments during a 2016 interview with “The Breakfast Club” and said much of what he stated was taken out of context. But he also admitted to being caught off guard by the question, since he’s never marketed himself as a political or conscious rapper.
Then in July of this year, when Rocky was still locked up in Sweden and the hashtag #JusticeForRocky” circulated, his comments came up again.
It happened when Crissle, who hosts “The Read” podcast, reposted the rapper’s words from that 2015 interview and implied that she wouldn’t be supporting him. And it was something that people like Joe Budden blasted her for.
Rocky once again addressed that interview during a recent chat with Kerwin Frost and said he gave that answer because he didn’t feel comfortable speaking about the shooting deaths of people like Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, who was gunned down by a white police officer in 2014.
“In those old interviews, I used to say, ‘I think it’s inappropriate for me to rap about things I didn’t help with,'” Rocky explained. “I felt like when it came to Ferguson, J. Cole went down there and he actually was on the news and he helped. I felt like he deserved to rap about it.”
“So when someone [asked] me that in 2015, I’m like, ‘I just feel, personally, if I’m in SoHo or I’m here, I can’t even talk on that,'” he added. “That’s appropriating. … It’s not sincere. It’s pretentious.”
Rocky also talked about being locked up in Sweden during the interview, which can be seen below.
