India Arie, one of Joe Rogan’s most vocal critics, stated that she doesn’t believe in cancelculture and isn’t asking for the podcaster’s censorship, even though she uses her music from Spotify’s platform.
Rogan is one the streaming service’s most prominent stars with a contract that could bring him more than 100 million. Arie joined Joni Mitchell and Neil Young in asking for their music to be removed from the streaming service due to it’s inclusion on “The Joe Rogan Experiment” podcast. Arie stated that her reasons were due to his racist content.
On Monday’s “Good Morning America”, the singer stated that she does not ask Spotify to decide between Rogan and her, nor do she call him racist. She doesn’t want to be associated in any way with a platform that invests so heavily in Rogan and not enough in musicians or less controversial podcasters.
“I’m not in a position to tell Spotify to not have Joe Rogan. She explained that she doesn’t believe cancel culture. “I have never called Joe Rogan racist. I said, “I don’t like it. Take me off.” This is mostly about me standing up to my dignity. How far can someone go before they say, “OK, I’m tired now”?
She repeats her comments from the appearance she made on the ” Tameron hall Show“, where she explained that she had two reasons for them.
“One is Joe Rogan’s conversation. For me, his conversation about race and some of what I’ve heard and seen. The treatment of Spotify artists is also a part of that conversation. Joe Rogan is the underpaid artist and I don’t know how to stop it.” She explained.
Arie shared an earlier video compilation in which Rogan used the N-word several times on his show. She also used other racially sensitive language to give context to her decision not to call out Rogan.
Rogan, 54 years old, shared a video on Instagram Friday night in which he expressed his “deepest, most sincere” apologies.
“This video is to share the most shameful and regretful thing I have ever done publicly. A video of me using the N-word is out. This video is a compilation of clips taken from 12 years of conversations on my podcast. It’s all smushed together. Rogan stated that it looked “f—ing terrible, even to myself.”
Rogan spent much of his video message explaining the context behind his use of this slur.
Arie posted a message on Instagram last week in which explained why Rogan was allowed to continue on the platform, despite his racially charged language.
Monday’s post was titled “Neil Young opened an entrance that I must walk through.” “I believe in freedom to speech,” the artist wrote. “However Joe Rogan is problematic for reasons other than his Covid interviews… TO ME, IT ALL HIS language around Race.”
She said, “Respect is what I’m talking about – who gets it? Is it fair to pay musicians a fraction of a penny? HIM is worth $100M This shows what type of company they run and how loyal they are to their company.
Janai Norman, a reporter for “Good Morning America”, stated that Arie mentioned in their interview that Spotify was a topic she was interested in discussing.
