T-Pain Says If Spotify Removes Joe Rogan, Then Everyone Has to Go

T-Pain has offered his thoughts on the Spotify-Joe Rogan controversy. The rapper-singer said that if Spotify removes Joe Rogan from their platform, they’ll be forced to remove everyone else who uses derogatory terms.

In a video interview with Backgrid, which TMZ posted on Monday (Feb. 7), T-Pain shared his opinion on the incriminating video that surfaced online featuring Joe Rogan saying the N-word multiple times on his podcast—years before he signed a $100 million deal with Spotify.

The “Buy You a Drank” artist posed a questions: what exactly are people so upset about? Are you angry about the perceived harmful content or is the outrage strictly personal?

“Cancel culture only works if there’s action taken,” he told TMZ. “Let’s keep in mind, he’s been saying all this shit since before the $100 million, now he’s got an unlimited supply of money.”

T-Pain agrees that Rogan’s use of the N-word is ugly and worthy of cancelation from Spotify but he wants to know where was the cancel culture people when Rogan said the racial epithet years before his big podcast deal.

“Everybody knew that shit was happening, it wasn’t like he wasn’t a small podcaster before all this shit,” he explained. “All this shit was public and all of this shit was goin’ on, we should have stopped him a long time ago.”

“We should have kept the same energy a long time ago,” the AutoTune pioneer added. “Everybody needs to keep that same energy all the fuckin’ time, not just when someone gets a bunch of money.”

In Rogan’s defense, the podcaster has since issued a statement apologizing for his past use of the N-word and vows to never use it moving forward. Rogan also removed about 70 podcast episodes that feature him using the racial epithet.

Additionally, Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek told employees that despite the controversy surrounding Rogan they are not pulling his podcast. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope,” he wrote in an internal memo (via The Washington Post).

When asked if Spotify should remove Rogan from its platform, T-Pain said that’s not going to happen because the streaming service needs to recoup their investment.

“They spent $100 million on that man, the only thing they can do to get their money back is to keep him on air,” he said. “It sucks to say.”

“The only thing you can do is shut down the entire company because they have their priorities in their mind, they aren’t worried about what the fuck we’re saying,” the Florida rhymer continued. “If that was the case, they would take off all the shit we saying about killing each other. We understand what the message is and we understand what we want, but you gotta understand their side of it too and they don’t give a fuck.”

T-Pain concluded by saying that if Spotify removes Joe Rogan from their platform for his derogatory remarks, they will have to remove everyone else—namely rappers and rap music and nobody wants to do that.

“If they want to take off the derogatory terms for African-Americans, they have to take off all the derogatory shit we say,” he explained. “They have to take everything off—they can’t just censor Joe Rogan and just be like, ‘Well, that’s good, let me get back to my muthafuckin’ killing album.’ If they take it off, they have to take all of it off…but nobody wants that.”

T-Pain may have a point. When it comes to the controversy surrounding Joe Rogan at Spotify, it may all come down to just dollars…and sense.

Watch T-Pain’s video interview at TMZ.com.