John Mellencamp recently sat down with Bill Maher and revealed that he once penned a controversial song but chose not to release it to not contribute more to the racial issues in the United States. The rocker revealed the name of the song and pointed out the flaws within the entertainment business:
“I wrote a song that I never recorded because I thought it was wrong, but it was called ‘From the F*cking Cotton Fields to the Playing Fields.’ So my point is that, yeah, so what? We white people love to have Black people entertain us.”
Mellencamp also stated that the issue of racism hasn’t been resolved or improved much since his own childhood and gave a personal example:
“I have a 29-year-old son. One of his best friends was Black. They went somewhere in Los Angeles. The guy got in an argument with this little skinny Black kid, waited for him to walk outside the bar and ran him over and killed him. How much more of a f*cking example do you want?”
The topic came up because John remarked he doesn’t approve rappers using the N-word. This has been debated among rappers as well. In 2020, Ja Rule commented:
“Abolish the N-word. As black men we shouldn’t want to refer to each other as a word that was meant to demean and oppress our people.”
Conversely, some artists advocate for reclaiming the term. In 2018, Kendrick Lamar halted a fan he invited on stage when she used the N-word while singing along to his track ‘M.A.A.D City.’ He later elaborated in an interview:
“Let me put it to you in its simplest form. I’ve been on this earth for 30 years, and there’s been so many things a Caucasian person said I couldn’t do. Get good credit. Buy a house in an urban city. So many things – ‘You can’t do that’ – whether it’s from afar or close up. So if I say this is my word… please let me have that word.”
You can watch the whole interview below.
