A$AP Rocky Attempts To Clarify Black Lives Matter Comments

In an interview with YouTube talk show host Kerwin Frost, A$AP Rocky said he learned through conversations with his friends that many people were excited that he was in jail in Sweden because of his previous remarks.

What We Know:

  • He said that it was honestly a misunderstanding. Rocky told Frost in the interview, “I thought I addressed that in the past and to be in jail hearing people still trying to stir up some weird sh*t.” He said, he felt that he didn’t do enough to be in a place to rap about the Black Lives Matter movement
  • Rocky told Time Out New York in 2016 that he didn’t want to talk about Ferguson. He later clarified that in an interview with Complex magazine. Rocky said, “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…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 ask 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 also tried to clear things up on The Breakfast Club but his comments only made things worse when he said that the Black community shouldn’t wait to do something when police shootings occur. Rocky said in the interview, “I just get upset, and what I was really trying to say there was, like, yo, I just, I hate when the bandwagon stuff start. I mean, how come, you know, Black lives only matter when a police take ’em, when a police officer takes it? And it should be like, Black lives, it should matter when a Black life take it. You know what I mean? It should always matter. All lives matter!”

With the interview with Frost, Rocky offered insight about the advice he received from Meek Mill to people who influenced him as a rapper.