KeKe Palmer is calling out the music industry. Palmer who has been in the entertainment industry for more than two decades, is voicing her opinion on how the “Me Too” movement should also happen for singers, rappers, producers, managers, and more based on her own experiences.
Palmer spoke to PEOPLE about how she has launched her own entertainment company called Big Boss Entertainment and her digital platform KeyTV. Through Big Boss, the Nope star shedded a light on her own expiernces through music. Palmer released her latest project titled after her entertainment company Big Boss which is a full-length LP and film. She addressed her own experiences in the film just as shes previously spoken about the alleged “sexual intimidation” she experienced back in 2017 with Trey Songz on a video shoot. She denounced however that although the scene is real in her film it was not inspired by that moment in particular.
“Those scenes are real,” Palmer spoke of her film Big Boss. “Those scenes are not actually inspired by that moment. Obviously, people know that moment and are aware of that scenario from when it happened and when I spoke about it. But that just goes to show, that was one of many moments where things go down in this industry. Not always did I say something, but I said something in that particular situation because my likeness was being used, and I'm just a business person in that regard. But as far as being in an uncomfortable situation as a woman, where I'm either being sexually harassed, intimidated or just being made uncomfortable in a space that's dominated mostly by men, those are very real people, and that's a very real, accurate situation. And there are countless others.”
She then called out how the music industry needs to take into account for the fact that this is a normalized occurrence.
“It hasn't happened in music, and it should. Bad s— happens in all industries, obviously, but specifically entertainment. We know bad things happen in all of them, but it's almost like the acting world represents a union and the music industry represents non-union,” she explained. “It's happening in the actor world but eventually, it's going to come to a d*** halt. Somebody's going to get called out. Something's going to happen. At some point, we're going to come to some kind of understanding. With music, it's like everybody is being paid, and everybody's a crooked cop. So, it seems like nothing will ever really come to a head.”
Palmer spoke how the situation with Songz has changed her habits, what she's learned going forward, and most importantly speaking up and not blaming herself.
“I think by literally standing up for myself, not allowing for a moment to go by if I feel like I need to say something — and I'm going to say something. I started to really work hard to remove myself from those situations. The situation in that scene was after, I think, the incident [with Songz]. As I depicted in the film, it was somebody who I thought was a friend, where I'm thinking that I'm putting myself maybe in better situations, but I continuously will find myself around people in weird situations that I thought were friends or family. That's probably the bigger thing. When all that stuff went down, people kept saying, “Oh, well why did she do this?” Well, because I thought I could trust this person, and that's the unfortunate thing.”
“Being a woman is like, ‘D***, the biggest mistake you can make is trusting somebody.' D***, I just shouldn't have trusted someone? I wish that there was more that we could do, but it seems like we can't even really expect for people to respect our boundaries. Now, my best way of coping is to just not go places alone, not really let my hair down, not really get too comfortable. I mean, I've had to do so much preventative s— because I can't trust people to behave. The sad thing is that you learn these things from being in bad situations. It almost feels like it's a coming-of-age story for a woman. It's like, “D***. I didn't know I couldn't do this until this happened. D***, now I've got to be more careful. Wow.” It's this very heavy weight.”
Palmer's Big Boss album and film are out now.
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