Erykah Badu caught a ton of backlash and angry comments on social media, after a recent interview surfaced. Now she’s speaking out about the heat she’s caught and blaming the media for twisting her words.
In case y’all missed what all the hype is about, here’s a quick recap. The other day, Vulture.com released the interview Badu did with their interviewer, David Marchese. In The interview, Badu was quoted as giving praise to murderous Nazi leader, Adolph Hitler, for having some “good” in him, by possessing great painting skills.
Via Vulture: “I’m not an anti-Semitic person. I don’t even know what anti-Semitic was before I was called it. I’m a humanist. I see good in everybody. I saw something good in Hitler, said Badu.[…] Hitler was a wonderful painter.”
The interviewer voiced his disagreement with Badu’s Hitler statement and the two commenced to going back and forth on it during the interview.
Misunderstood
However, in her full quote, the point Badu was making with those references, was that she can find good in anyone and that she chooses to always think freely, using her individual thought, instead of following the herd. Many outlets only reported the quote she stated about Hitler, without posting the entire statements she’d made. Although Badu referenced a racist man who murdered thousands of innocent Jewish people, she’s still calling out “the media” for creating “clickbait” articles for money. See what she tweeted below…
Badu:”Say what u must. Dialogue is cool . I invite it. But please do me a favor if you can , Black & Jewish Twitter, just don’t use the word “problematic ” any more. 😂Y’all using that too much . 🙄.. oh and read the article. The media is banking on our ignorance. Know we won’t read the whole thing. They’ll use controversial quotes w/trigger words as Click Bait. We??controversy. So Blogs choose easiest thing to “spin”. Get you mad. Help you get a little rage out. They get more adds. The message lost.”
Although Badu pointed her finger at the media, she did admit that her Hitler reference was a bad idea:
“People are in real pain. So I understand why my ‘good’ intent was misconstrued as ‘bad’. In trying to express a point, I used 1 of the worst examples possible, Not to support the cruel actions of an unwell, psychopathic Adolf Hitler, but to only exaggerate a show of compassion.”
To further demonstrate how much her words were take out of context, Badu retweeted many fans who actually read her entire article, instead of just one line from it:
And trigger words . Don't forget trigger words. https://t.co/MVVCAnq8TX
— ErykahBadoula (@fatbellybella) January 24, 2018
https://twitter.com/Viccct_/status/956275179822440448
https://twitter.com/Sweetiedelmar/status/956278985733890048
https://twitter.com/Peyton/status/956271372191268866
Read Badu’s ENTIRE interview here.
