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Daniel Caesar is admitting he was wrong for the 2019 rant about Black people while he was defending white influencer YesJulz. Caesar came to the influencer's defense after she attacked Scottie Beam and Karen Civil.
The influencer made headlines for her exploitation of Black culture and was called out. She also made herself a target for scrutiny by tweeting a picture of a t-shirt with the slogan “N—– lie a lot” across the front, and asking her followers if she was allowed to wear it at a festival.
Caesar went directly to his followers after YesJulz was targeted online for her comments.
“Why are we being so mean to Julz?” he asked his followers. “Why are we being so mean to white people right now? That’s a serious question. Why is it that we’re allowed to be disrespectful and rude to everybody else and when anybody returns any type of energy to us. That’s not equality. I don’t wanna be treated like I can’t take a joke.
“White people have been mean to us in the past, yeah, but what are you going to do about it? Tell me what you’re going to do about that? There’s no answer, other than creating and understanding and keeping it moving. You have to bridge that gap.”
Now, in a new interview with Apple Music 1, Caesar reflected on the 2019 incident.
“I completely understand the response,” he told Nadeska. “And in time, after taking time to get over myself and to really honestly look at myself and everything that was happening, I was wrong. I was wrong, and I’m sorry about that. For a long time, I was like, ‘You can’t do anything, you can’t say anything without whatever.’
“You can do and say whatever you want, but it’s like for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. And that’s physics, that’s science. That’s one of those things that the knowledge of that can literally put my mind at ease where I’m like, oh, I did deserve. What happened, happened because I deserved it, because I knocked the domino over and set a course in motion.”
Nadeska pointed out that Black women especially felt disrespected by his words and how he was defending “was someone who we feel like had taken a lot from Black culture and not appreciated it.”
Caesar responded: “Yeah, it’s really when I think about it, it was like, ‘Yeah, it was the perfect storm, honestly.’ I just mean it’s kind of crazy how awful that was,” he said of her sentiments. “Throughout the process in the last few years it was so often, it’s like, ‘so that was a mistake.'”
Now, he wants to share his experience and hopes that it inspires others to make a change.
“I just put it all into the music,” he revealed. “And that’s kind of like I was saying like, at this point, after having punished myself, after having been punished, it’s like at this point you got to just keep making music.
“I want to make music that leads people somewhere as opposed to music that can pacify them or make them feel good. I want to make music that makes people want to change their life. Truly inspiring music.”
Daniel Caesar’s latest album, NEVER ENOUGH, was released on Friday (April 7).
