Birdman, rapper and head honcho over at Cash Money Records, has gotten tired of all of the political correctness in hip-hop. He expressed his irritation with a rent wave of forced apologies on the air with MTV Thursday. The former Big Tyma said he considered rallying his troops and boycotting Reebok and Mountain Dew for dropping endorsement deals for Rick Ross and Lil Wayne respectively.
"Really, we could've reversed that [termination of endorsement deals] because my whole take was, since they wanna clown, I can clown and group all my people up," he said. "But on the respect I have for Swizz (Beatz, a Reebok partner), that's why I didn't clown. I could've put all my people together and say, 'Now my culture and my community, we're not supportin' y'all.' "
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The Reebok incident occurred when Ross was featured on Rocko's "U.O.E.N.O," and dropped a line about slipping some "molly" into a woman's drink, and underhandedly implying date rape. The rapper apologized but was dropped by the shoe brand. Lil Wayne made a sexual reference referring to the beatings of Civil Rights-era victim Emmett Till in his guest verse on Future's "Karate Chop." Lil Wayne is a member of Cash Money and Ross isn't, but Birdman doesn't feel they should have apologized for free speech.
"I think sometimes these people looking at every measure, every line," he said. "I come from the old school, what we said was what we said and we ain't care how you fell. This is music, man; all we doin' is makin' music. But when it affects like it did Ross and like it did Wayne - when they got dropped, it makes you look at it different."
He says the P.C. approach of some listeners won't change up his approach, especially on his upcoming "Rich Gang" compilation album.
