We as a society are willing to never listen to a pedophiles music ever again, but what about an attempted murder? Or a racist? Or abuser? At what point do we no longer separate the art from the artist, and instead acknowledge their problems and finally stop streaming? Here are four controversial artists, and some thoughts on their accusations.
Kanye ‘Ye’ West
It’s not often that a musician posts a shirt with a Swastika on it for customers to buy. But, Ye, the musician formerly known as Kanye West, has been receiving flack for his extremely anti semitic views for years.
Recently, Ye posted many anti semitic posts on X before deleting his account, and now, his aforementioned t-shirt has reached two million sales (yes, that’s two million self-declared Nazis.) This is not the first time Ye has brought up his anti semitic views, he’s been saying ‘strange’ things like his 2022 tweet about “going defcon 3 on Jewish People” for insanely long.
While his music may be good, can people really ignore these actions? “Some of his music is good but you don’t want to support him because he’s a bad person, and listening to his music is supporting him,” junior Chloe Morris said.
Zach Bryan
If you listen to Zach Bryan you would think of him as extremely romantic; given how much he talks about love, dreams, and all sorts of hopeful stuff.
Contrary to popular opinion, Bryan actually has various accusations ranging from emotional abuse of his girlfriend to homophobic rhetoric. If he’s writing such nice lines about romance, maybe he shouldn’t be awful to his girlfriend. And to make it worse, he recently caught on camera saying a homophobic slur after losing a game of pool at a bar.
It goes on: he was also arrested, and received a viral mugshot to go along with it. He was arrested mainly because he got out of his car after being pulled over, and argued with the arresting officer.
“When you start doing physical crimes that’s when I draw the line,” senior Jay Bey said.
Drake
“Say, Drake, I hear you like ‘em young.” Most people have heard prolonged beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, primarily surrounding allegations of pedophilia. But all of the lawsuits and drama has been going on forever.
Lamar accused Drake of liking young girls in his diss tracks, and Drake sued Universal Music Group (UMG), the record company that released all of Kendrick’s songs that mention Drake for defamation and harassment. Drake claims that he isn’t a pedophile, but it’s been looking increasingly concerning.
“They should just boycott him, because someone who is so disgusting doesn’t need all that money to continue doing their disgusting habits,” freshman Amaya King said.
Melanie Martinez
Generally speaking, coloring books do not contain images vaguely referring to child abuse. However, Melanie Martinez released a coloring book based on her songs, and it contains many violently suggestive images, including many depicting children with knives and performing other aggressive activities.
Although the book was not advertised for children, lots of the images represent child abuse. If that wasn’t bad enough, she faced rape allegations from her former friend, Timothy Heller. In 2017, Heller tweeted that Martinez had raped her. Martinez claimed that Heller had “never said no” to their activities.
“[I stopped] streaming her music on Spotify because I don’t wanna give money to a rapist,” junior Tobias Walker said.
