Apple Music and Hot 97 personality Ebro Darden recently went viral recently for his remarks about Drake. The conversation centered around whether the Canadian rap superstar does enough to confront racial injustice.
Darden and his Rap Life Review co-hosts discussed Drake dissing Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” single. In particular, Darden took issue with Drake taking aim at a song that covered serious topics like race-related violence.
“Drake, who has never shown up, and y’all know I’m the biggest Drake fan on this show,” Darden said. “Drake has never shown up to have anything to say about anything going on in society with Black folks or anything other than himself.”
Social media users then began reacting to Ebro Darden’s comments. The longtime rap insider decided to further address the situation involving Drake on his Hot 97 morning radio show on Tuesday (July 18).
“By the way, I don’t know if I even want [Drake to give social commentary in his music],” Darden said. “That’s not who he is. I don’t think an artist is obligated, if you have a platform… but in this context, you’re talking about a song that did… now you’re in the fray.”
He added, “We love Drake for who Drake is. Drake’s talking about love, he’s very transparent personally. From what we can tell, he’s a nice person. He’s not a mean-spirited person. None of that. We don’t need him to be some social activist.”
Ebro Darden went on to say he felt the need to speak on Drake’s apparent lack of activism because of the “This Is America” takedown. Darden expressed, “Don’t come for the song that was saying something when we needed somebody to say something.”