(AllHipHop News) There were a lot of people that offered support for A$AP Rocky when the Harlem rapper was arrested in Sweden. However, there were also people that used that moment to point out that Rocky once came off as insensitive to the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
“So every time something happens because I’m black I gotta stand up? What the f*ck am I, Al Sharpton now? I’m A$AP Rocky… I don’t wanna talk about no f*cking Ferguson and sh*t because I don’t live over there. I live in f*cking SoHo and Beverly Hills. I can’t relate,” declared Rocky in a 2015 interview.
He then doubled down on not wanting to tackle political topics during a visit to The Breakfast Club the following year. The man born Rakim Mayers said, “I feel like why put me on a pedestal for that, especially when I’m not asking for that? I want to make music. I want to inspire. I want to promote peace because, at a time like this, I don’t have all the answers. I’m not trying to run for Congress or office.”
Following his legal ordeal in Sweden, some African-Americans questioned if Rocky had changed his opinion about avoiding the subject of social justice issues. Kerwin Frost recently interviewed Rocky and his previous Ferguson comments came up again during the conversation.
“I’m speaking back to people and they’re like, ‘Yo, in the States – everybody’s going crazy… Then you got people on Black Twitter, they brung up some sh*t that you said, saying you don’t really care about the hood,'” Rocky recalled to Frost. “I thought I addressed that before in the past. Just to be in jail and hearing people still trying to stir up some weird sh*t.”
Rocky added, “What I will say though, from those old interviews, I used to say sh*t like, ‘I think it’s inappropriate for me to rap about certain sh*t that I didn’t help with.’ I felt like when it came to Ferguson, J. Cole went down there and he actually was on the news and he actually helped. I felt like he deserved to rap about that. He deserved to say something about that. So when someone asked me that in 2015, I just feel, personally, if I’m in SoHo or I’m here, I can’t even talk on that. That’s like appropriating. That’s what everybody do… It’s not sincere. It’s pretentious.”
The 31-year-old entertainer went on to say, “I’m still not wrong for that. The only part that I was wrong at was that when in my case, there were people that never been to Sweden, never been to Harlem. There’s people that don’t know A$AP Rocky but still were empathetic or sympathetic to my situation and was vocal and helped my situation. So I was wrong.”