After disastrous interviews with Tucker Carlson and LeBron James' The Shop, the latter that was scrapped, BTW, rapper turned media personality N.O.R.E. has issued an apology for one of the messiest interviews of his career.
via Complex:
In the interview, as previously reported, Ye made incorrect remarks about the cause of death in the murder of George Floyd. Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt later announced that Floyd’s family is considering a lawsuit against Ye over “false statements about the manner of his death.”
Specifically, Ye attempted to link Floyd’s 2020 death at the hands of since-convicted Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin to fentanyl. This is an outright fabrication, as Floyd’s death was officially ruled a homicide. Chauvin, notably, is currently behind bars after being found guilty in Floyd’s murder.
During a call-in appearance on Monday’s Breakfast Club, N.O.R.E. apologized to Floyd’s family and said that Drink Champs will employ editing in the future.
“I just wanna be honest, I support freedom of speech,” N.O.R.E. said. “I support anybody, you know, not being censored. But I do not support anybody being hurt. I did not realize that the George Floyd statements on my show was so hurtful. And you gotta realize, it was the first five minutes of the show When he walked in, he told my producer, he said that if he’ll stop filming, he’ll walk out.”
According to N.O.R.E., he and the team didn’t want to have a “Birdman moment” (Birdman walked out of a Breakfast Club interview in 2016). N.O.R.E. also said he “checked” Ye on his comments later into the episode, although he conceded he was “already inebriated” by that point, which meant his pushback may have been overlooked.
“I apologize to the George Floyd family,” he said. “I apologize to anybody that was hurt by Kanye West’s comments.”
Around the 3:40 mark in the video below, N.O.R.E. was asked why Drink Champs even bothered with the interview at all given Ye’s recent antisemitic comments. N.O.R.E. responded with an explanation focused on how Ye has treated him in one-on-one scenarios in the past, although he also condemned Ye’s current rhetoric.
“I don’t support none of it,” he said. “I don’t support the George Floyd comments, I don’t support the antisemitic [comments]. That’s all I have is Jewish friends, all I have is Black friends. That’s it.”
I think at this point all of these fans and industry acquaintances who are still holding out for the Koonye of yesteryear need to accept the fact that he is so far gone in the sunken place that there's no coming back.
I understand that his controversial and bigoted opinions breeds high ratings, but at some point we need to stop slowing down the car to look at the train wreck for our own selfish amusement.
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