Kendrick Not Allowed To Talk About Politics Anymore In Interviews?

[The_King_of_Everything]

From ktt:

Ok, some background: Back in 2012, Kendikk revealed that he didn't believe in voting. And then, back In January, Kendrick did an interview for Billboard where he said this:

Quote
What happened to [Michael Brown] should've never happened. Never. But when we don't have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us?

- Source

..And then he dropped The Blacker the Berry, where he said:

Quote
So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street when gang banging make me kill a nikka blacker than me?
Hypocrite!

A lot of ppl interpreted this as Kendrick doing the whole "but what about black on black crime???????" thing racist ppl ONLY bing up when cops kil unarmed black ppl. So Kendrick caught a lot of flack for these two comments, as I'm sure ou guys remember

Anyways, Kendrick Just did an interiew with NME Magazine, which seemed cool, until....

Quote
So when we’re informed that politics is off the menu as a topic of conversation before sitting down to chat with Kendrick, it’s hard not to feel short-changed. Swedish journalist Mats Nileskär – the guy whose Tupac interview Kendrick samples at the end of the record – persuasively suggested that these songs double as a soundtrack to an emerging civil rights movement in the US. Surely their author would have a word to say about that?

“No politics!” barks Kendrick’s manager, who’s been lurking silently in the background throughout our interview, when I try and smuggle a question in under the table. “Kendrick’s here to promote his album.”

“But surely the album is political!” I sputter indignantly. “Isn’t it relevant to…”

“No politics,” the manager replies, with an air of finality.

Sooo...basically TDE has decided that Kendrick, after dropping a political album, won't be allowed to talk about or elaborate further on the politics on said album...at all. What do you guys think of this?

 

[K.Dot]

Well, I suppose he doesn't want to scare off his white fanbase completely.

 

[Pop123]

"Republicans buy Nike too" - Michael Jordan. There's that, and the fact that Kendrick raps his views a lot clearer and more precisely than he speaks them in interviews

 

[OnlyInCalifornia]

Or maybe he wanted to promote the album instead of trying to get into a political debate about America in the eyes of the rest of the world?

He's a rapper first and his job is to promote/sell albums, not a politician.

 

[Mr. Togo]

Kendrick on his way to Beyonce status, can't do anything without 5 handlers approving it

 

[The_King_of_Everything]

Or maybe he wanted to promote the album instead of trying to get into a political debate about America in the eyes of the rest of the world?

He's a rapper first and his job is to promote/sell albums, not a politician.

But the interviewer did want to talk about the album. Did you read the quote?

 

[fukkyalifestyle]

Or maybe he wanted to promote the album instead of trying to get into a political debate about America in the eyes of the rest of the world?

He's a rapper first and his job is to promote/sell albums, not a politician.

I think its a combination of this plus pressure from interscope to not go too political.

 

[OnlyInCalifornia]

But the interviewer did want to talk about the album. Did you read the quote?

I read the whole thing. Breh, don't play dumb. He was trying to milk him for some WOW statement so his interview would go off and the questions were leading to it, that is why the managers said what he said.

I think its a combination of this plus pressure from interscope to not go too political.

I am sure Interscope appreciated the Fox News plug but doesn't want to turn him into a political figure. They won't sell a lot of his records like that heh.

 

[Monster]

no comment

 

[The_King_of_Everything]

I read the whole thing. Breh, don't play dumb. He was trying to milk him for some WOW statement so his interview would go off and the questions were leading to it, that is why the managers said what he said.



I am sure Interscope appreciated the Fox News plug but doesn't want to turn him into a political figure. They won't sell a lot of his records like that heh.

I'm not playing dumb the album is heavily influenced by politically and social issues if I was interviewing him I would have asked as well.

 

[Kitsch]

 

[OnlyInCalifornia]

I'm not playing dumb the album is heavily influenced by politically and social issues if I was interviewing him I would have asked as well.

The album is heavily influenced by political and social issues for black males in the inner city of America....

What would a white kid from Sweden really know about that? You could ask him and have a much better understanding.

Again, don't try to play it off as anything other than this guy shooting for what all online interviewers want, which is for it to spread like wild fire because of some tweetable quote.

 

[Maximus Rex]

Be a conscious rapper and not allowed to talk about your politics

S/O to the Gawd Lupe for telling it like it is not caring how the mainstream thinks

 

[Reebok Jones]

What would a white kid from Sweden really know about that? You could ask him and have a much better understanding.
tweetable quote.

didn't it say in the OP that the "white kid from Sweden" was the guy who did the origianl tupac interview at the end of TPAB? I'm sure he knows quite a bit about that stuff.

Again, don't try to play it off as anything other than this guy shooting for what all online interviewers want, which is for it to spread like wild fire because of some tweetable quote.

You're acting like this is some secret evil ulterior motive of journalists. The entire basis of interview journalism is to get the interviewee to say interesting things about whatever topic they're talking about. In this case, it's the album which is highly political and has political messages in almost every single song. If you restrict the interviewer from asking anything political about the political album, you take away like half the possible questions to ask. One of the biggest reasons Kendrick is famous is because he's such a political voice in his music, so doesn't it make sense that when you read a Kendrick interview you would want him to have the same voice. Isn't that one of the most appealing and interesting things about him? So why not try to get him to talk about it? Of course it would benefit his career and company/website, that's what doing your job correctly is called. It's not all for the journalists, it's a symbiotic relationship between the interviewer and interviewee. They both give eachother publicity, so it would make sense for them to work together and talk about the most interesting parts of the interviewees life and worldview right?

 

[OnlyInCalifornia]

didn't it say in the OP that the "white kid from Sweden" was the guy who did the origianl tupac interview at the end of TPAB? I'm sure he knows quite a bit about that stuff.

Oh okay. My bad. I didn't realize a kid 15,000 miles away from another country could understand that album because he interviewed Tupac one time.