T.I. believes there are some in the Black community who’ve spoken out against racial justice so many times that Black folks shouldn’t deal with them anymore.
The rapper feels conservative commentator Candace Owens is one of those people, as well as Terry Crews.
T.I. was a virtual guest on Nick Cannon’s Power 106 radio show in an interview that hit YouTube on June 10.
The two spoke about the ongoing protests against police brutality and systemic racism. They also talked about cancel culture, a name given to the public’s collective decision to no longer support an individual or company.
T.I. spoke specifically about Black people canceling each other and said it’s not always the best tactic to use when trying to accomplish a common goal. But he believes that people like Owens and Crews are the exception, based on their past statements about Black folks.
“Now, some severe cases, like Candace Owens. She got to go. She can’t come,” T.I. told Cannon near the 17:10 mark. “I think she a paid plant. I think someone paid her to come out here and speak against everything that the majority of us are standing for. [She’s] not a double agent, she’s their agent.”
“You mean to tell me that there’s no injustice that you ever seen happen on behalf of people of color that you can speak out for?” he added. “So white people are always right? You telling me law enforcement is always right? You telling me the United States of America has always been right when it comes to dealing with us? And that’s her story. And you can’t trust that story because we have facts that show us otherwise.”
T.I. and Owens clashed when they were both panel guests at the Revolt Summit conference last year, something that Cannon brought up in the interview. T.I. asked the political commentator, who’s a staunch Donald Trump supporter, about Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
“When you say ‘Make America Great Again,’ which period are we talking about?” T.I. asked Owens at the conference. “The period when women couldn’t vote, the period when we were hanging from trees, or the crack era? Which period in America are you trying to make America like again?”
The rapper was credited for stumping Owens, since she didn’t answer his question directly.
During his interview with Cannon, T.I. doubled down on his belief that Owens has removed herself from the Black community to the point where she can no longer return.
“When this young lady was in college, this young lady had a racist … something happened to her, an attack, something happened to her,” T.I. said, likely referring to a discrimination suit she filed as high school student with the help of the NAACP. “She called out to the community, and she got justice, I guess in her case. Ever since then, she seems to have forgotten that she’s Black. She has turned in her Black card and she’s crossed over.”
Crews was the next person the “Paper Trail” creator spoke to Cannon about.
On June 7, Crews sent a tweet about the current uprising and wrote, “Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth. Like it or not, we are all in this together.”
Crews was blasted from everyday people and celebrities alike for his message. The actor has since responded, saying in one tweet that everything he says about the fight for racial justice is in the “Spirit of love and reconciliation, for the Black community first, then the world as a whole.”
Crews’ message didn’t seem to influence T.I.’s opinion that he should be canceled, however.
“Terry Crews is another one,” he told Cannon.
Cannon responded by saying the actor merely needs “guidance,” but T.I. disagreed.
“I’m still waiting on Terry Crews to speak on behalf of [the Black community],” the rapper stated. “What he’s doing is, he’s trying to instruct the community to not be so harsh as it pertains to dealing with white supremacy. … We can’t have Black supremacy because we don’t have the tools to oppress.”
