Morgan Wallen is speaking out following controversy.
The 28-year-old country star, who came under fire earlier in the year after being caught on camera using a racial slur, sat down with Michael Strahan for his first interview since the incident on Friday’s (July 23) Good Morning America.
During the conversation, he spoke about his understanding of the word at the time, and what he’s done since the scandal first erupted.
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When asked if he understood why using that word “makes Black people so upset,” he said: “I don’t know how to put myself in their shoes because I’m not. But I do understand, especially when I say I’m using it playfully or whatever, ignorantly, I understand that that must sound, you know, like, ‘He doesn’t — he doesn’t understand.’”
He also talked about why it happened.
“I was around some of my friends, and we just…we say dumb stuff together. And it was — in our minds, it’s playful…that sounds ignorant, but it — that’s really where it came from…and it’s wrong,” he explained, adding that he used to use the word around a “certain group of friends” of his.
He added that he “didn’t mean it any, in any derogatory manner at all.”
“It’s one of my best friends — he was, we were all clearly drunk — I was askin’ his girlfriend to take care of him because he was drunk and he was leavin’.”
“I think I was just ignorant about it. I don’t think I sat down and was, like, ‘Hey, is this right or is this wrong?’”
Morgan Wallen also discussed the fallout following the video, including being called out by his fellow country stars.
“My manager called me probably two hours before the video came out. He was, like, ‘Are you sittin’ down?’ And no one’s ever called me and said that before. I went to one of my friends [who] has a house out in the middle of nowhere, just sittin’ in that house, tryin’ to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do.”
He also said he spoke with the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), an advocacy organization that was created to fight for fair treatment of Black artists and address racism in the music industry, as well as various members of the industry.
“I’ve heard some stories in the initial conversations that I had after that — just how some people are, you know, treated even still today. and I’m just, like, I haven’t seen that with my eyes — that pain or that insignificant feeling or whatever it is that it makes you feel,” he said.
Morgan also said the video was taken on “hour 72 of a 72-hour bender” and he was intending to focus on sobriety moving forward, including a stay at a rehab center after the scandal.
“For 30 days, I spent some time out in San Diego, California — you know, just tryin’ to figure it out…why am I acting this way? Do I have an alcohol problem? Do I have a deeper issue?” he said.
In addition, he addressed the sales spike of his album Dangerous: The Double Album following the incident.
“Before this incident my album was already doing well. It was already being well-received by critics and by fans. Me and my team noticed that whenever this whole incident happened that there was a spike in my sales. So we tried to calculate what the number of — how much it actually spiked from this incident. We got to a number somewhere around $500,000, and we decided to donate that money to some organizations — BMAC being the first one,” he revealed.
“I’m not ever gonna make, you know, everyone happy. I can only come tell my truth, and — and that’s all I know to do.”
When asked about whether the country music industry has a racism problem, he answered: “it would seem that way, yeah. I haven’t really sat and thought about that.”
Find out what radio is doing with his music months after the controversy.
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