A brief, sordid history of why country music can’t use rap music’s “n-word.”
It’s been quite the trip from N.W.A.’s name to Morgan Wallen’s lips…but that trip’s over now.
Morgan Wallen’s choice last Sunday night to refer to one of his white friends as a “pussy ass n***a” was, to paraphrase the artist’s own words, “an inexcusable embarrassment.” In an unprecedented turn of events, Wallen has been “indefinitely suspended” by his label Big Loud Records. He’s had his videos scrubbed from CMT and songs immediately removed from radio playlists by Cumulus Media, Entercom, iHeartmedia, Pandora, and SiriusXM. It’s a spectacular backlash against the top-selling artist in all music at the moment.
The fallout from the event finds Wallen’s supporters on social media asking variations of the same question: “If black rappers can say the n-word, then why can’t a white country star?”
Related to the question of “why can Black people say the n-word, but White people can’t,” CNN’s Darryl Forges explained in a 2020 video. Foremost, it’s…
