‘Drink Champs’ Podcast Deletes Entire Kanye West Interview Under Intense Backlash, Citing Rapper’s ‘False and Hurtful’ Comments
Just one day after apologizing for having the controversial rapper on their podcast, Drink Champs has decided to delete their interview with Kanye West entirely.
On Monday, the host of the Drink Champs podcast, N.O.R.E. appeared on The Breakfast Club to apologize for comments made by West during their Sunday episode.
During the podcast, West claimed that George Floyd was not killed by Officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 but in fact died of drug abuse.
“He said a prayer for eight minutes, they hit him with the fentanyl,” West said. “If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”
On Monday, N.O.R.E. said, “I support freedom of speech, I support anybody, you know, not being sensitive, but I do not support anybody being hurt… I apologize to the George Floyd family. I apologize to anybody that was hurt by Kanye West’s comments.”
On Tuesday, the show took N.O.R.E.’s statements one step further and decided to delete the entire interview with West off of their platform.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a representative of the show cited West’s “false and hurtful” comments as the reason why they removed the episode.
Drink Champs prides itself on its ability to allow a free flow of ideas within the hip hop community. That being said, unfortunately, the recent interview with Kanye West contained false and hurtful information regarding the circumstances surrounding the murder of George Floyd. Integrity is very important and we don’t want to promote false narratives on our platform. Our goal is to celebrate the culture. Therefore, we had no choice but to remove the episode from distribution. We apologize to the family of Mr. Floyd and anyone else hurt by this episode.
This move comes days after LeBron James’ hit HBO show The Shop decided to scrap an episode they filmed with West after he decided to “reiterate more hate speech and extremely dangerous stereotypes,” during the interview.
Producer for the show, Maverick Carter, said “We have made the decision not to air this episode or any of Kanye’s remarks. While The Shop embraces thoughtful discourse and differing opinions, we have zero tolerance for hate speech of any kind and will never allow our channels to be used to promote hate. I take full responsibility for believing Kanye wanted a different conversation and apologize to our guests and crew. Hate speech should never have an audience.”
