Kanye West’s controversial comments about slavery have cost him airtime on a hip-hop and R&B radio station in Detroit.
DJs BIGG and Shay Shay at Detroit’s 105.1 The Bounce announced Thursday that they would stop playing the rapper’s music and the rest of the station has agreed to follow suit.
“We feel like Kanye has gone too far with his latest statement declaring that ‘slavery was a choice,’” the pair said in a Facebook post. “We are over it. We don’t want to hear Kanye’s music, we don’t want to play Kanye on our show, we don’t want to talk about Kanye anymore.”
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“So we are taking a stand and we aren’t playing his music anymore; we just are refusing to give him a platform,” they added. Their post included the hashtag #MuteKanye to their Facebook live post.
“We need a break,” Shay Shay from the ‘Morning Bounce’ program told the Detroit Free Press. “I think it’s a gut feeling of when we’ll be able to feel comfortable playing it again, when we’ll want to hear it again, and more importantly, when will our listeners want to hear it again.”
The Detroit radio station is not alone in the West boycott.
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On Wednesday, New York City radio host Ebro Darden appeared on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon to discuss West’s comments.
The next morning, Hot 97, where Darden’s show airs, tweeted, “The boycott of Kanye West has begun.”
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Earlier this week, West sparked outrage when he appeared on an episode of TMZ live and stated his controversial opinions on slavery.
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“When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years? That sounds like a choice. Like, you were there for 400 years and there’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally imprisoned,” he said.
He continued: “I like the word ‘imprisoned’ because slavery goes too directly to the idea of blacks … so prison is something that unites us as one race. Blacks and whites being one race. That we’re the human race.”
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This caused Van Lathan, a TMZ employee, to speak up and voice his disapproval for West’s “absence of thought.”
“Kanye, you’re entitled to your opinion, you’re entitled to believe whatever you want. But there is fact and real world, real life consequence behind everything that you just said. While you are making music and being an artist and living the life that you’ve earned by being a genius, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives,” Lathan said to West.
Lathan continued: “We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said for our people was a choice. Frankly, I’m disappointed, I’m appalled, and brother.”
“I’m unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something to me is not real,” Lathan concluded.
West responded by approaching Lathan and saying, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
After receiving a great deal of backlash, West then turned to Twitter to clarify his comments about slavery.
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“To make myself clear. Of course, I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will,” he wrote.
West sent a follow-up tweet, saying, “My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved.”
“They cut out tongues so we couldn’t communicate to each other. I will not allow my tongue to be cut,” West wrote.
West also explained that he mentioned “400 years” of slavery, since slavery lasted 246 years.
“The reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can’t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought. It was just an idea.”
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