Crew (GoldLink)

“Cancel culture” continues to be a hot-button issue on public forums like Twitter, as proponents of accountability maintain that no one is ever really “canceled” en masse, while others wring their hands at the prospect of political correctness run amok. Into this debate, one user injected an intriguing example that has prompted some serious (and hilariously unserious) consideration from hip-hop fans.

“Cancel culture isn’t real unless your name is Daniel Caesar or Goldlink lmaooo,” wrote @mali3035, referencing the rapper and singer whose respective popularity levels have seemingly flagged since both scored career-defining hits in 2017 (“Best Part” with H.E.R. and “Crew” with Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy, respectively). “They got them negros outta here,” @mali3035 joked.

To recap, GoldLink was the subject of backlash when he noted similarities between his 2015 project And After That, We Didn’t Talk and the late Mac Miller’s 2016 album The Divine Feminine in a lengthy post on Instagram. As Miller had recently passed, the post was read as “disrespectful” by many fans and peers, including Anderson . Paak, who penned a long response of his own. Since then, GoldLink has released another pair of projects, but has yet to reach the same heights as he did on “Crew.” He also claims that he wasn’t trying to accuse Mac of plagiarism, but intent and reception don’t always agree.

Seeing the original tweet claiming GoldLink is canceled, other fans quickly chimed in, sending the DMV-bred artist’s name to Twitter’s trending topics as they debated whether or not he really was canceled and why. While some simply maintained that “Crew” was just the result of the song being bigger than its principal artist (thanks in no small part to the efforts of its guests), others noted that GoldLink seems to be doing fine, despite reduced streaming numbers in comparison to that smash. Others simply defended GoldLink, saying that they refused to go along with what they saw as a vindictive agenda.

For what it’s worth, GoldLink’s story isn’t all that uncommon in hip-hop — Vh1 used to run specials about the biggest one-hit wonders in pop music all the time and rappers usually constituted significant chunks of those lists (the “how” and “why” is a subject for a longer, better-researched piece). GoldLink and Daniel Caesar are likely far from “canceled” (seriously, very few public figures don’t recover from bouts of bad press — even R. Kelly has his defenders), and while neither has matched their biggest hits so far (although Caesar is featured on Justin Bieber’s “Peaches,” a monster jam in its own right), that doesn’t mean they don’t both have long careers ahead of them, if they want them.