A$AP Rocky learned quickly that the internet will turn on you.
The Testing rapper was arrested in Stockholm in July 2019 after he and two members of his entourage got into a street brawl. The weeks while Rocky was incarcerated, his celebrity friends started a petition to rally for his release. His incarceration even got the attention of President Trump, who asked for Prime Minister Stefan Löfven to allow the rapper to come back to the United States.
While some of his fans prayed for his release, others suggested that he deserved to be in jail due to old comments that he made about the Black Lives Matter movement.
In a 2015 interview with Time Out, Rocky appeared to be unconcerned about police violence against African-Americans, in the wake of the Ferguson riots. When talking about being compelled to rap about Ferguson, he said, “I’m A$AP Rocky. I did not sign up to be no political activist. I wanna talk about my motherfuckin’ lean, my best friend dying, girls, my jiggy fashion and my inspirations in drugs. I live in fucking Soho and Beverly Hills. I can’t relate. I go back to Harlem, it’s not the same. It’s a sad story. I gotta tell you the truth. I’m in the studio, I’m in fashion houses, I’m in these bitches’ drawers. I’m not doing anything outside of that. That’s my life. These people need to leave me the fuck alone.”
In a new interview with Kerwin Frost, Rocky clarified his past comments. Rocky said that people called him and told him that Black Twitter says he doesn’t care about the hood.
He said, “I thought I addressed that in the past and to be in jail hearing people still trying to stir up some weird shit.” He then explained what he meant by his past comments.
”What I will say though is in those old interviews I used to say ‘I think it’s inappropriate for me to rap about things I didn’t help with,’” he continued. “I felt like when it came to Ferguson, J. Cole went down there and he actually was on the news and he helped. I felt like he deserved to rap about it. So when someone asks me that in 2015 I’m like: ‘I just feel, personally, if I’m in SoHo or I’m here I can’t even talk on that’… That’s appropriating. … It’s not sincere. It’s pretentious.”
Rocky starts talking about his Black Lives Matter comments around the 52:25 minute mark. Check out the video below.