In February, a video of Morgan Wallen shouting a racial slur outside his home in Nashville was leaked by a neighbor to TMZ, and the country singer has since experienced numerous consequences including suspension by his record label, having his music pulled from hundreds of radio stations and losing eligibility for this year’s ACM Awards. In the wake of the scandal, Jimmie Allen reached out to Wallen, sharing on Bobby Bones‘ BobbyCast podcast that he “kept it 100” with the singer.
“After it happened, I reached out to him, and we talked every day until he left,” he said, adding that he told Wallen, “Bro, no matter how drunk you get, there’s three things you can’t do: you can’t say the n-word if you ain’t Black, can’t say the f-word if you ain’t gay and you can’t beat women.” The Delaware native told Bones that he was not personally offended by Wallen’s use of the slur but noted that it should never be used.
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“The reason why and this is from me, being Black, talking to a bunch of Black people,” he explained. “First of all, the way he said it, he didn’t use the -er, and it was like, okay. S that’s why a lot of Black people, we laughed and it was like, ‘Oh okay, well, he said it right.’ True, you shouldn’t say it, but at the same time, just ’cause I don’t agree with what he said, doesn’t mean I should banish him.”
Allen added that some of the opinions he saw on social media after the fact “rubbed me the wrong way,” including when he saw white people tweeting that they were “so offended.” “If people would have said, ‘I don’t agree with this,’ ‘He shouldn’t have used that,’ ‘That’s the wrong word to use,’ that’s one thing,” he said. “When people start to use words like offended, the word offended is weird to me because my grandfather taught me at a young age, when someone says something to someone else, not directed at you that doesn’t affect you. The only way that you can become offended, is if you are so self-absorbed [that] you make something about you that’s not about you.”
The Delaware native told Bones that in response to Wallen’s slur, he could “yell at him and bash him on social media” or “take some time and kind of really process the whole thing and look at who Morgan is.” Allen pointed out Wallen’s previous behavioral issues including an “alcohol situation” and “reckless behavior.” “There’s so many things than just the n-word, and I feel like everybody was just focusing on that,” he said. “This is a guy, a fellow country artist, that we’ve seen struggling for years now. And no one cared until he said the n-word. No, he’s been a person the whole time with problems.”
In his only statement since the video was released, Wallen issued an apology in an Instagram video and urged his fans to stop defending him. “I was wrong,” he said. “It’s on me to take ownership for this and I fully accept any penalties I’m facing. The timing of my return is solely on me and the work I put in.”
