T-Pain has weighed in on the ongoing saga over Spotify’s platforming of Joe Rogan, who is currently at the center of two controversies.
In a recent chat with TMZ, T-Pain shared his thoughts on cancel culture before the topic of criticism leveled against Joe Rogan for COVID-19 misinformation and his repeated use of the N-word in the past came up. “Cancel culture only works if there’s action taken,” said T-Pain, who highlighted that Rogan has been “saying all this shit before he got $100 million,” referring to the deal Spotify inked with Rogan to keep his podcast exclusive to the streaming service.
T-Pain suggested that people should’ve “taken action a long time ago,” and that “everyone knew that shit was happening.” He conceded that there “should be punishment for certain things,” but ultimately “we should’ve kept that energy a long time ago.” He implied that people only started to care about Rogan’s disinformation, racism, and platforming of far-right figures once he landed his huge Spotify deal.
“They need to get their money back, they spent $100 million on that man,” he said. “It sucks to say, man, but that’s just what it is dude. … They don’t give a fuck.” He said that if Spotify is to “censor” Rogan, they’d need to take action against more material on the platform. “They just want what’s making them uncomfortable now,” he continued, accusing some musicians of releasing what he called “murder albums.” “They gotta keep that same energy with everything.”
Recently, a number of notable musicians including Joni Mitchell and Neil Young have pulled their music from Spotify in protest of Rogan’s podcast and its perceived role in spreading misinformation. In a 10-minute video addressing the criticism, Rogan defended his choice to platform COVID-19 vaccine “skeptics” and other like-minded individuals. Less than a week later, he shared another video in which he apologized for his use of the N-word.
