Dwayne recently took to social media to express his admiration for Kendrick Lamar’s support of XXXTentacion’s music. He referenced a tweet from Kendrick on August 25, 2017, where the rapper encouraged his followers to listen to XXXTentacion’s album “17.” Kendrick shared a link to the project’s Apple Music stream and described it as “Raw thoughts.”
In response, Kendrick returned to Twitter a few minutes later, revealing that he had listened to “17” a total of five times. Dwayne praised Kendrick for standing up for XXXTentacion when others did not, especially when Spotify was not playing X’s music due to their “hateful conduct” policy.
In 2018, Spotify made the controversial decision to remove XXXTentacion’s music from their playlists, citing violations of their policy. This move came amidst allegations of domestic abuse and questionable social media behavior on X’s part. While some supported Spotify’s decision, many in the music industry criticized it as censorship and a double standard.
TDE label head Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith openly voiced his concerns to Spotify’s Troy Carter about the issue of censorship, questioning why hip-hop artists seemed to be targeted. He argued that artists should not be censored, especially within hip-hop culture, and that other genres and cultures were not being held to the same standard.
Overall, Dwayne’s comments on social media shed light on the complexities surrounding the music industry’s decisions regarding controversial artists like XXXTentacion, and the ongoing debate over censorship and artistic expression.