Rapper Lil Durk has a message for record executives, entertainment agents, award show producers, and radio station and streaming platform owners: Morgan Wallen isn’t cancelled.
Early last year, after a leaked video showed the country star drunkenly using the N-word in reference to a white friend, Wallen faced a massive backlash that saw establishment figures throughout the industry distancing themselves from him. His label suspended him, and high-powered agency WME dropped him as a client. He was further banned from multiple music award shows and radio outlets and music streaming platforms pulled his songs out of rotation. Nevertheless, as The Daily Wire previously reported, Wallen went on to have the top-selling album of the year in any genre.
He also, surprisingly, ended the year at the top of the Hip-Hop charts thanks to a collaboration with black artist Lil Durk who told TMZ last week that he was happy to partner with Wallen on the rap-country hit, “Broadway Girls.”
“Nah, he ain’t no racist, that’s my boy. We had a long talk, he had his public situation. We ain’t behind closed doors. I’d vouch for him in a minute. He’s good,” Durk told the outlet when it asked him about Wallen’s use of the racial slur. He went on, “[Wallen] ain’t canceled, I talked to him. When I say you ain’t canceled, you ain’t canceled.”
Other black performers appear to be following Durk’s lead in letting Wallen put the past behind him. Comedian Druski sat down with the 28-year-old country star for an interview on his Clubhouse show, “Behind the Vest,” at the end of December. Wallen told the funnyman that he reached out to Durk, asking him if they could work together.
“That song kind of came about over this summer, and I was really, really, really pumped on it,” Wallen said, adding, “Durk commented on my Instagram. … So I hit him up. Me and him had been talking a little bit throughout the year and kind of developed a friendship.”
He also told Druski that he’d welcome an opportunity to work with other rappers, and mentioned several he has his eye on, saying, “I do love Moneybagg [Yo]. He’s definitely at the top of the list. … But, like overall, ever…I’m trying to think of not just in the past little bit…Kendrick Lamar would be pretty cool.”
At the time that TMZ leaked the infamous video, recorded without Wallen’s knowledge by one of his neighbors, he was quick to apologize.
“I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back,” Wallen said in a statement. “There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever. I want to sincerely apologize for using the word. I promise to do better.”
Going by sales of “Broadway Girls,” at least, hip-hop fans appear to be taking him at his word.