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Media personality Adam22 defended his recent interview with someone involved in the murder of Pop Smoke, leaving social media users angry.
The controversial media personality Adam22 publicly defended his actions in recently interviewing one of the four men charged with the death of rising rapper Pop Smoke. “I didn’t do that interview because I don’t care,” the skateboarder-turned-podcast host expressed in a video. “That’s what a lot of people seem to think. ‘Adam just doesn’t give a f**k.’ That’s not the case at all. I did that interview because I thought it was an important historical record of somebody involved in one of the most tragic, insane stories in rap history.”
The interview on his
No Jumper podcast was with Blockstar, who was 15 years old at the time of the Canarsie, Brooklyn rapper’s murder in Los Angeles, California in 2020. He
received a four-year sentence in concordance with a plea deal struck with prosecutors. Blockstar sat down for the interview after his release from a juvenile detention facility and expressed his condolences to the family of Pop Smoke but no remorse for his actions. “I send my condolences to the family. I wish it never happened. But I don’t regret nothing,” he said. “Growing up, my people, my family told me, ‘You ain’t sorry for nothing. Whatever you did, you did it for a reason and stand on it.’”
In the video, Adam22 also referenced
DJ Vlad, another figure whom many have similarly accused of behavior exploiting Black culture and Hip-Hop in his interviews. “I remember when Vlad took a lot of heat because he interviewed Keefe D… I thought it was pretty impressive that Vlad stood on his principles and did that interview. It was an important story,” he said. Adam22 would also state that someone else would’ve interviewed Blockstar if he hadn’t.
The explanation, however, only served to cause more outrage from observers on social media. Akademiks addressed the situation on a live stream and the damage it could lead to. “[H]ere in the media we have to take a little bit of accountability… I wonder if he knows the repercussions of what he’s doing…the n—a killed somebody in Hip Hop… then gets paid to tell the story on a Hip Hop platform… it’s a dangerous precedent.”
Check out the other reactions to Adam22’s video below.
