UPDATE: Nov. 2 ― Lil Wayne has issued an apology over his remarks, according to TMZ. He told the site, “When the reporter began asking me questions about my daughter being labeled a b***h and a hoe, I got agitated. From there, there was no thought put into her questions and my responses.”
Lil Wayne is at it again. The popular rapper has weighed in on race in America, and his comments have left many black people shaking their heads in dismay.
In a new interview with “Nightline” that aired Tuesday night, Wayne sat down to talk about his music, his success, and his feelings about race in America. In a preview clip shared by Nightline ahead of the episode, Wayne said that he doesn’t feel “connected” to the Black Lives Matter movement. Indeed, in the clip below, it seems as though he’s never even heard of it:
“What is it? What do you mean? That just sounds weird,” Wayne replied when asked about the anti-police brutality movement.
“I don’t know, that you put a name on it…It’s not a name, it’s not, ‘whatever whatever.’ It’s somebody got shot by a policeman for a fucked up reason.”
He added: “I am a young, black rich motherfucker. If that don’t let you know that America understand black motherfuckers matter these days, I don’t know what it is. That man white, he filmin’ me. I’m a nigga. I don’t know what you mean, man. Don’t come at me with that dumb shit, man. My life matter. Especially to my bitches.”
At the end of the clip, Wayne says he doesn’t feel connected to the Black Lives Matter movement because “it ain’t got nothing to do with me.”
After Nightline shared the excerpt from the full interview on Tuesday night, black people on Twitter expressed their disbelief and disappointment:
Wayne’s comments on Black Lives Matter are disappointing, to say the least, but they should come as no surprise. In September, the rapper declared that he doesn’t believe that racism is really an issue anymore and that he himself has never experienced racism firsthand. He often points to the fact that a white cop once saved his life, and that the majority of his fans are white.
And it’s not as if Wayne is the only black person that feels this way. Many black people, especially those of the older generation, find it difficult to understand or feel connected to the movement. But their inability to see the way systemic racism affects their everyday lives does not mean that systemic racism does not exist.
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