It’s time to stop being shocked about Morgan Wallen’s continued success.
Is it frustrating? Of course. Does he deserve it? Probably not. Am I going to lose sleep over it? Not anymore.
Before February 2021, when a video showed the country singer drunkenly using the N-word outside of his home, I doubt many Black people were aware of who Wallen was. Not to say that zero Black people knew of his existence, but he wasn’t as infamous as he is today.
Now that it has been nearly three years since the incident, it’s time we forget about him altogether. That’s a tough ask, especially for me, since it has frustrated me to the core that this man continues to enjoy the spoils of his career without any real repercussions or accountability. But many Black people have already made their thoughts clear, we do not support Wallen and will never do so in the future.
Despite the outrage, White America has essentially ignored us, continuing to catapult Wallen to the top of the Billboard charts and making him one of the most streamed artists in the country.
Initially, there were consequences to his actions, as his music stopped being played on radio stations and his record deal with Big Loud Label was suspended. But it didn’t stop fans from supporting him.
Hell, even Billboard, (the publication that recently interviewed him), invited Wallen to their award show in 2022 and gave him the trophy for top country male artist.
The emotions and feelings of Black people have not been taken into account by the country music industry and its fans. Do you know why? Because we don’t move the needle. Black people aren’t the gatekeepers of country music. We aren’t the ones spending our money on their music. So why would they appease us when they (and Morgan Wallen) can survive without us?
So since they can survive without us, we should never give Wallen the time of day ever again, no matter how anrgy we are with his past actions.
More from Billboard:
“There’s no excuse. I’ve never made an excuse. I never will make an excuse,” Wallen says of using the slur. “I’ve talked to a lot of people, heard stories [about] things that I would have never thought about because I wasn’t the one going through it. And I think, for me, in my heart I was never that guy that people were portraying me to be, so there was a little bit of like, ‘Damn, I’m kind of actually mad about this a little bit because I know I shouldn’t have said this, but I’m really not that guy.’ I put myself in just such a sh-t spot, you know? Like, ‘You really messed up here, guy.’ If I was that guy, then I wouldn’t have cared. I wouldn’t have apologized. I wouldn’t have done any of that if I really was that guy that people were saying about me.”
Honestly, I don’t care about anything Wallen says, and I never will. He said the N-word. Black people got angry. White people ignored it. Black people called it out again. White people continued to ignore it. So it’s time we ignore the singer altogether. No need to share our thoughts on him anymore.