In the wake of the murders by cop of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile a couple of weeks ago, somebody dug up and recirculated some comments A$AP Rocky made after being asked about the epidemic of police brutality and what responsibility he bears as an artist to get political during an interview with Timeout NY back in 2015 (see below). He caught hell when the interview first appeared and he caught some fresh hell this week when people who hadn’t previously read his comments got wind of them. This morning he stopped by The Breakfast Club to elaborate on his opinion.

While his words are certainly more measured here, and he does express sympathy for victims of brutality, he still manages to reiterate many of the sentiments he expressed in the original interview before rehashing the favorite false equivalence of racist white people on the internet about Black-on-Black crime. He also utters the words “All Lives Matter”, which in an ironically roundabout way, sort of proves his point that maybe we should just respect some people’s silence on certain issues.

Here are Rocky’s original comments to Timeout. I should also note that he says he was misquoted by the interviewer here.

An argument did arise, though, at Oxford University, when you said you didn’t want to get political in your music.
I think speaking on a subject is fine but I don’t feel like I need to make songs off of it. If I felt like doing it I would. [That student’s] whole question was, “Why haven’t you [gotten political?” I’m like, Bitch, ’cause I don’t feel like it. Kendrick is doing that already. J. Cole is doing it already. Let them deal with that shit. I wanna talk about the fucked-up shit in my life. Not that fucked-up shit I see on TV. Because I’m not there. How am I gonna talk about something I’m not helping? It’s fucked up. It’s a touchy subject.

Do you ever feel like you’re being forced to address these issues?
They’re not forcing me to do shit. I’m just gonna stay black and die. Why, because I’m black? So every time something happens because I’m black I gotta stand up? What the fuck am I, Al Sharpton now? I’m A$AP Rocky. I did not sign up to be no political activist. I wanna talk about my motherfuckin’ lean, my best friend dying, the girls that come in and out of my life, the jiggy fashion that I wear, my new inspirations in drugs! I don’t wanna talk about no fucking Ferguson and shit because I don’t live over there! I live in fucking Soho and Beverly Hills. I can’t relate. I’m in the studio; I’m in these fashion studios; I’m in these bitches’ drawers. I’m not doing anything outside of that. That’s my life.