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All through tonight’s Billboard Music Awards, first-time host Diddy made it abundantly clear that the televised present was his manufacturing greater than anybody else’s, dropping the N-word throughout his opening monologue, selling Ciroc, and giving out his personal REVOLT Black Excellence Award.
He additionally determined to make use of his powers as host and govt producer to formally “uncancel” a few of the evening’s extra controversial performers—particularly rapper Travis Scott and nation singer Morgan Wallen.
“We’re uncanceling the canceled,” Diddy mentioned about an hour and a half into the present. “[Brother] Love doesn't rock like that. I checked out Morgan’s state of affairs. I checked out Travis’ state of affairs. And I mentioned, man, I obtained some energy to do one thing about that as a result of we will’t begin that within the music industry and even in life, interval. So I’m right here to forgive, to unify, to have a good time, and to have everyone be free.”
Scott has notably been out of the highlight because the deadly crowd rush at his annual Astroworld Pageant final yr that left 10 folks lifeless. Followers have since accused the Houston rapper of being liable within the tragedy, and he’s presently going through quite a lot of civil lawsuits from victims’ households.
Wallen, however, confronted scrutiny and industry-wide backlash after a video of him calling a person the N-word leaked in February of 2021. Following the incident, quite a lot of streaming platforms briefly eliminated him from playlists and stopped selling his music. He was additionally suspended from his file label Huge Loud earlier than being quietly reinstated within the months after the leak. Regardless of the controversy, and Wallen’s obvious lack of regret, Wallen’s album gross sales continued to skyrocket. And he’s been nominated for a number of industry awards since.
Whereas it appeared like Diddy’s hilarious internet hosting antics had been going nicely originally of the ceremony, his unnecessary try to exonerate each Scott and Wallen—however significantly Wallen—didn't go over nicely on Twitter.
“Diddy ‘uncanceling’ Morgan Wallen and having him carry out on the present whereas awarding Tamika Mallory an award for her dedication to activism is unnecessary,” mentioned one person.
“It took virtually 20 years for Hollywood to let Janet’s incident on the Superbowl go,” wrote one other. “They nonetheless decide Britney Spears for being herself, however P. Diddy requested us to forgive Travis Scott after he enabled a tragedy in his present, Morgan Wallenafter he used the n-word. Loopy, huh?”
“A yt man walked right into a grocery store to kill black folks with n*gger written on the rifle,” wrote another person, “in the meantime Diddy simply ‘uncancelled’ Morgan Wallen who had the identical phrase in his mouth…it’s getting bizarre.”
Finally, essentially the most complicated a part of the endorsement was how pointless it was. Apart from the preliminary backlash to their scandals, there hasn’t been a considerable lower in Scott and Wallen’s public approval rankings—Scott returned to Instagram to a variety of love in his mentions, and Wallen virtually obtained a slap on the wrist for his racism. In interviews, Diddy has lengthy promoted rules of unconditional love, forgiveness and positivity, like most celebrities whose wealth protects them from having to assume critically about issues that don’t immediately have an effect on them. Whereas he might have let the blame for the artists’ appearances fall on NBC, Billboard or their unrelinquishing fanbases, he needed to make a public assertion defending the 2 musicians as a result of it finally protects wealthy folks like himself ultimately.