Earlier this week, Oyster Magazine published a conversation between Dev Hynes and Julian Casablancas.
The two musicians discuss many musical things—MJ vs. Prince, their first bands, and having a family member of another race.
The non-musical discussions ended soon thereafter. Too soon, according to Dev: he took to Tumblr today claiming Oyster cut “everything to do with race and my past that I discussed, which was not easy for me to do.” Dev said Oyster had previously agreed to run the full transcript.
Dev has a history of sharing stories good and bad from the road. His growing frustrations culminated in “Do You See My Skin Through the Flames,” and he left social media last month.
Dev broke his silence on Tumblr today—the full statement is below. No response yet from Oyster.
“End of last year Julian and I had a conversation for a magazine (that I don’t need to name) in which we openly had a conversation for an hour, talking about music, racial politics and our past. This magazine in question didn’t want to put the interview out without it being edited … fair enough. So we took it elsewhere.
Oyster Magazine agreed to post it un edited.
They just posted the interview, I don’t know who it was involved, magazine, publicist … so i won’t fully point blame in any true direction right now … but they fully edited and censored it without telling us. Cutting out everything to do with race and my past that I discussed, which was not easy for me to do. Why? So they can have another bullshit piece to add to the noise of the internet? Keep us talking about prince & MJ, of course … but let’s take out the section about the million man march … Let’s keep the section talking about first bands we played in … but take out the part where i talk in detail about being assaulted by security and having my knee knocked out of place at Lollapalooza.
It’s very disheartening … & yet again left with the feeling of a lack of trust & hope. In fact, i’m certain that you don’t even see what the real problem is here? I’m sure most people won’t. It’ll be seen as “Dev lashes out at Oyster Magazine” or “why is he moaning about being featured in a magazine …” it’s not about that to me, I could care less about any of that shit, none of that matters on a day to day in the real world … but the idea of being able to speak freely about things that I think are bothersome to me & to JC, and to others, when told that I could … was really special to me. I don’t do many articles/interviews because it’s all the same noise, not even slightly an ego thing, in fact it’s more like the opposite. So I was happy when this opportunity arose to talk openly and un-edited with a friend.
I spoke about such personal things, things that weren’t easy for me because I thought that it could be helpful maybe for someone somewhere out there, as well as myself, and you just took it out … like it was nothing … nothing but a distraction to your own world distraction.
You had a chance to really add to something, and show people that there are real conversations taking place in the world right now, but you chose otherwise. And prove yet again that the censorship of a free speaking Black man is of less value to you than retweets.”
