The latest star to come to the defense of controversial podcaster Joe Rogan is former guest Freddie Gibbs, who actually appears on the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast offering his take on Rogan’s recent racial slur scandal. Although Gibbs didn’t openly approve of Rogan’s comments and actions, he did give the host some grace while reminding him that he shouldn’t have said the things he said.
“You can’t say that sh*t, Joe, ’cause you pissed n****s off when you did that compilation,” Gibbs said. “It was funny as f*ck, though, I can’t even lie. But hey man, look, I don’t think you a racist, my n****a. You my n****! I f*ck with you. I never thought you was a racist. I just think you were saying some sh*t you shouldn’t have said and a lot of us n****s say stuff that we shouldn’t say sometimes. It is what it.”
One thing Gibbs was adamant about, though, was the proper context for the use of the word in question. “I want to tell white people right now: y’all just gotta let us have that,” he quipped. “Just let us have ‘n****.’ Y’all already human trafficked us over here, let us have that.”
Rogan received a massive backlash after a recent episode of his video in which he makes some (ahem) off-color remarks about Black people was followed by several old episodes in which he says “n****” were resurfaced by social media users. After being called out by Trevor Noah, Fat Joe, and others, Rogan issued a boilerplate apology, which was praised by such milquetoast cultural authorities as the hosts of The View and The Rock (who later backpedaled after realizing that class solidarity doesn’t always trump racism). Others, like Samuel L. Jackson, didn’t accept the apology at face value. Meanwhile, Rogan faced a separate, but related backlash as multiple stars pulled their music from Spotify, which hosts Rogan’s podcast, over his constant propagating of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.