NEW YORK
Spotify’s popular U.S. podcaster Joe Rogan apologized Saturday after a video compilation surfaced that showed him using a racial slur in clips of episodes over a 12-year span.
In a video posted on his Instagram account, Rogan, who hosts a podcast called “The Joe Rogan Experience,” said his use of the slur was the “most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.” But he said the clips were “taken out of context.”
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“It’s not my word to use. I am well aware of that now, but for years I used it in that manner,” he said during the six-minute video on his Instagram account. “I never used it to be racist because I’m not racist.”
Rogan’s mea culpa follows Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter India.Arie’s announcement on Thursday that she was removing her music from the Spotify streaming service because of the racial slur that Rogan had made during his podcasts. She posted the video montage of Rogan’s clips on her Instagram account. Rogan, who launched his podcast in late 2009, didn’t specify which years he used the racial slur.
In her video, Arie said even if some of Rogan’s conversations were taken out of context, “he shouldn’t be uttering the word.” “Don’t even say it under any context,” she added.
Rogan’s message Saturday addressed a video a clip from his podcast 11 years ago in which he talked about going to a movie theater in a Black neighborhood to see “Planet of the Apes”.
“I was trying to make the story entertaining, and I said we got out and it was like we were in Africa. It’s like we were in ‘Planet of the Apes.’,” Rogan said. He said he wasn’t trying to be racist but realized it was “an idiotic thing” to say. He said he deleted the podcast but that someone must have saved the clip.
Rogan’s apology comes as Spotify is promising to combat the spread of COVID-19 misinformation as part of a damage-control campaign sparked by musician Neil Young, who called out the streaming service’s top podcaster for magnifying vaccine skepticism.
