A$AP Rocky tries once again to clarify his comments on Black Lives Matter

A$AP Rocky said that he was still getting shade from comments he said years back concerning Black Lives Matter, but he's still trying to put them into context

Dawn Onley

Jan 6, 2020

[griojw id=”4s6V7JEQ” playerid=””]

While serving time in jail, rapper A$AP Rocky said he was shocked to learn that people were still upset at comments he made nearly five years ago about the Black Lives Matter movement.

In an interview with YouTube talk show host Kerwin Frost, Rocky said he heard through his friends that some people were glad that he was in jail in Sweden because of those comments, according to Complex.

He says it’s a misunderstanding as to his true intent.

“I thought I addressed that in the past and to be in jail hearing people still trying to stir up some weird sh*t,” Rocky told Frost in the interview. He said what he meant to express was that he didn’t feel he had done enough to be in a place to rap about the Black Lives Matter movement.

“What I will say though is 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 said in the interview, according to Complex. “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 ask 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’… That’s appropriating. … It’s not sincere. It’s pretentious.”

Back in 2016, Rocky told Time Out New York that he didn’t want to “talk about no f—–g Ferguson.”

“I don’t live over there. I live in f—–g SoHo and Beverly Hills. I can’t relate,” he said previously.

A year later, he tried to clear things up on the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club but for some, he made matters worse when he said the Black community shouldn’t wait to get up in arms only when police shootings occur.

“I just get upset, and what I was really trying to say there was, like, yo, I just, I hate when the bandwagon stuff start. I mean, how come, you know, Black lives only matter when a police take ’em, when a police officer takes it?” Rocky said in the interview. “And it should be like, Black lives, it should matter when a Black life take it. You know what I mean? It should always matter. All lives matter!”

The interview with Frost was wide-ranging, covering advice he received from Meek Mill to people who influenced him as a rapper.