Jimmie Allen addressed the Morgan Wallen situation in a new tell-all interview with Bobby Bones on the BobbyCast.
During Episode 285 of the BobbyCast, Allen told Bones how he reached out to Wallen, his reaction to Wallen’s use of the n-word, racism and much more. The “Best Shot” singer also revealed that a lot of people were upset with his response to the Wallen situation and told Bones’ that he has actually reached out to Wallen several times following the incident.
Allen explained that when he reached out to Wallen, he “kept it a hundred” with him and told him, “bro, no matter how drunk you get, there’s three things you can’t do: you can’t say the n-word if you ain’t black, can’t say the f-word if you ain’t gay and you can’t beat women.”
The singer then admitted to Bones that he wasn’t personally offended by his use of the n-word but also agrees that the word shouldn’t be said in any format, regardless.’
“Was I personally offended or upset when he said it? No,” Allen admitted. “And the reason why and this is from me, being black, talking to a bunch of black people. First of all, the way he said it, he didn’t use the er, and it’s like okay, so that’s why a lot of black people laughed and were like, ‘oh okay, well, he said it right.’ True, you shouldn’t say it, but at the same time just cause I don’t agree with what he said, doesn’t mean that I should banish him.”
He went on to explain that God and Martin Luther King are two of the most forgiving people ever to exist and “if Martin Luther King can forgive people that beat and killed his family members and we can’t forgive someone for using a word we don’t agree with.” Admitting that that’s what rubbed him the wrong way.
“A lot of time where I saw white people tweeting: ‘I’m so offended,’ ‘I can’t believe that you would do this.’ ‘I’m so hurt.’ You’re not hurt, that word doesn’t bother you, now if you people would’ve said ‘I don’t agree with this,’ ‘he shouldn’t of used that,’ ‘it’s a wrong word to use,’ that’s one thing,” Allen said. “But when people start to use words like offended, the word offended is weird to me because my Grandfather taught me at a young age, when someone says something to someone else, not directed at you that doesn’t affect you. The only way that you can become offended, is if you are so self-absorbed [that] you make something about you that’s not about you.”
He continued: “Now, you can be like man, ‘you shouldn’t say that bro, like it’s not a good look,’ you know what I mean, like don’t use that word it makes all white country artists look racist. That’s one thing but when people are doing the extra stuff, I just feel like people just want to be seen. I feel like sometimes people just want to be in the spotlight, with the extra hurt. And I was like okay in the midst of this, since you’re so hurt by this word. How many black employees do you have? How many black communities have you gone into and done work for? Have you reached out to Morgan and talked to him? A lot of times, it’s just nonsense, to where people want to look cool on social media like a lot of people who posted.”
Allen then spoke about the social media movement known as ‘Black Out Tuesday,’ that took place back on June 2, 2020 in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
“I know a lot of people who didn’t post the black square, that do stuff for black communities all the time and I know a lot of people who just posted it cause they don’t want to look racist but they’re doing nothing,” the singer explained. “Racism isn’t about what you post on your social media for the world to see, it’s about who you actually are, what your actually doing.”
“Morgan might’ve done this but I know a lot of great things that Morgan has done for black people and my thing is if we want to make the world a better place, we have to do the work and the work is putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations,” Allen explained. “When Morgan said what he said, I had two choices, I could yell at him and bash him on social media or I could take some time and kind of really process the whole thing.”
Allen decided to go the root of processing the whole situation and “look at who Morgan is, look at Morgan’s state of mind when he said that, look at Morgan’s history, the type of music he listens to and the movies he watches.” He continued to share that “people don’t realize, Morgan Wallen listens to a lot of hip-hop and that word is thrown around a lot, not making an excuse for using it but it’s like people ask their kids. Well, why do my kids know how to curse, cause they watch movies with cursing in it. They watch and hear you curse, so after a while it’s subconsciously embedded in to your brain to where it comes out, whether it’s hateful when it comes out or not. It’s there, now once it’s there, how do we remove it? That takes work, it took me personally calling Morgan and I told him and I said ‘Bro, whether you like this or not i’m inserting myself into your life because first and foremost man, you’re a father. You’re a father, you’re a person, How do we help you become a better version of yourself for your son. It’s deeper than okay you said the n-word, now we got to focus on well fix that, you know, you can’t say that, let that go. okay? That word is done, now how do we handle this alcohol situation? How do we handle your outbursts? How do we handle the reckless behavior? There’s so many thing then just the n-word and I feel like everybody was focusing on that man, this is a guy. A fellow country artist, that we’ve seen struggling for years now. And no one cared until he said the n-word and no he’s been a person the whole time with problems. So it’s like that’s me wanting to address the problem and finds ways to insert myself in people’s life and help people be a better person just like people did that for me.”
Bones then asked Allen is he had any backlash after spilling his thoughts of the situation online.
Allen replied, “Yeah, it was more white people upset than black people. I had somebody comment on my Instagram and was like ‘dude you can’t speak for black people, your not even black.’ And I was like what, I am black just cause I don’t have the same view as every black person does, doesn’t make me more or less black. It’s just my view. It’s just how I choose and I don’t bash other black people for their approach, that’s them, they have the right to do what they want to do because everybody views that situation differently.”
He continued to share that he “got bashed on both sides and I got supported and there was a lot of people in the hip-hop community that reached out to Morgan, a couple artists, a couple label execs on the R&B and hip-hop side reached out trying to find, how do we help you?” Later admitting, “that’s how it should be man, you know.”
The singer also agreed that there should be consequences for his wrongdoings as well.
“Now, there should be consequences and there should always be consequences and that’s the problem with his other outbursts of reckless behavior, there’s was never no consequences.” Allen said. “So, I feel like this whole situation could’ve been avoided, if there would’ve been consequences for his other actions. But I’m glad that there was consequences because you have to be held accountable for what you say. Hey man, said this, bro you need a time out right now, you need to go become a better person because you have too many people looking at you and too many lives your influencing to have this type of reckless behavior because it tells other people that that’s okay, and then instead of one person throwing that word around, we’ve got 50, then we got 100 people but if we can focus and make Morgan better. All the people that he’s influencing, they see his actions, they see his life, they see how he turned things around and they become better too.”
“I think it all comes down to, my grandfather is the most redneck straight forward dude, he said ‘the thing is people just need to mind their own damn business,’ that’s it. If people would mind their own business and just focus you being a good person, you doing what you need to do and stop worrying about everybody else, we’d be good but all this comes from is everybody in everybody else’s business,” Allen said but Bones chimed in saying “Yeah, if it’s not affecting you or somebody close to you and not hurting kids, it probably ain’t for you to be hopping in.”
Watch the full interview below.
