Lil Wayne dismissed criticism over his 2020 photo with former President Donald Trump during a Florida event focused on Black community initiatives.
He told Rolling Stone he didn’t care about the online reaction and only took the picture after Trump’s team suggested it.
“There was some people in there like, ‘Y’all should take a picture.’ He didn’t even ask for a picture,” Wayne said. “(Trump) says, ‘These m############ asking me for f###### pictures all f###### day, man. Can we please?’ I said, ‘It’s the President. OK.’ (Trump) was like, ‘Thank you. B###### (been) bothering me all day.’”
The image, snapped just days before the 2020 election, quickly circulated online and drew criticism, but the rapper shrugged it off.
“F### no, I don’t care about no backlash for nothin’ I do, you know me, man. My mama woulda been mad if I ain’t smile. That might have been the only backlash I would have worried about,” he said.
Wayne, 42, was later granted a presidential pardon by Trump in January 2021 for a federal weapons charge stemming from a 2019 incident in which he was caught with a loaded firearm on a private jet in Florida.
Despite the pardon, the Hip-Hop icon said he wouldn’t have backed Trump in the 2020 election.
“I would’ve told him, ‘You probably don’t want that,’ because I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I can tell you who won the last game, but I can’t really… you know what I mean? I don’t feel about it. I don’t give a f### about that type of s###.”
Wayne is currently gearing up for the release of Tha Carter VI, his fourteenth solo studio album, which drops June 6.