(AllHipHop News) Add the C-O-double M-O-N to the list of African American entertainers defending Justin Bieber against racist allegations. A month after Mack Maine claimed Justin Bieber had “legitimately adopted the Hip Hop culture”,
Back in June, a video tape surfaced of Justin Bieber singing “one less lonely nig*er” at the age of 14. During an interview with VladTV, Common admits to not seeing the tape itself but deduces from Bieber’s recent activity that he 20 year old singer is not a racist:
He surrounds himself with black people. So, I don’t think it was something that—To be honest I never even seen the tapes, but I got the feedback of it. But I don’t think it’s something that he was saying wholeheartedly to demean a black person.
Common later reasons that Bieber, who was born and raised in Canada, “must have been raised in a place where he just didn’t know” about the implications of those types of remarks. Common also takes the time to reiterate the message of his longtime collaborator Kanye West’s 2004 lyric “racism still alive, they just be concealing it”:
We got so many other problems in America, racism is not at the forefront. We feel like ‘Oh, we have a Black president. Oh, we see successful people out there that are African American and Black. We doing multicultural movies, so racism [doesn’t exist]. But it still does exists. It’s just under the table. One thing I liked about during time is that it was just out there and put on the table. I rather it just be put on the table, because that’s the way you get to the solution.
Check out Common discuss racism, Justin Bieber’s tapes and more with VladTV here.