Spotify About Close To Cutting Joe Rogan Loose!

Rogan said racial slurs on his podcast.

As many entertainers are considering pulling their music and podcasts from Spotify, the tech company is close to severing ties to controversial podcaster Karen Rogan.

It was not the coronavirus misinformation that has him in the final straw, it's the racial slurs he uttered on his podcasts.

Rogan has been under fire for a string of controversies.

It was R&B singer India.Aire who put the controversial star on blast about his use of the word NIGGER. On Thursday, Arie took to her Instagram Stories Highlights and posted edited footage of YouTube clips showing Rogan using the racial slur roughly two dozen times. She also posted clips in which Rogan appeared to share an anecdote in which he compared being around Black people to “Planet of the Apes.”

It began with Neil Young telling Spotify that you can choose to have Rogan but you can't have him. 

Neil Young led a boycott against Spotify.

Soon after, Joni Mitchell, India.Aire and numerous others followed by asking Spotify to remove their music from the playlist. Even former allies of Rogan are turning against him. Dewayne "The Rock" Johnson had to walk back his endorsement of the entertainer after he first backed him. When the racial slurs surfaced, Johnson had to back track. 

Of course, the far-right are now after Johnson after he made offensive remarks about Asians, transgender women and women.

After Arie’s post went viral, author Don Winslow tagged Johnson on Twitter and asked him to address the resurfaced clips of Rogan. Johnson had previously posted a supportive comment to Instagram after Rogan shared video on Sunday of himself addressing the furor and promising to “do my best in the future to balance things out.”

Johnson responded to Winslow’s tweet by writing, in part, “I hear you as well as everyone here 100%. I was not aware of his N word use prior to my comments, but now I’ve become educated to his complete narrative. Learning moment for me.”

Rogan later responded with a video on Instagram saying the clips were taken out of context from 12 years of his podcast, but expressed regret and acknowledged it “looks fucking horrible, even to me.”

India.Aire may have put the nail in the coffin for Rogan.

“I haven’t said it in years. But for a long time when I would bring that word up, like if it would come up in conversation, instead of saying ‘the N-word,’ I would just say the word,” Rogan said. “I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”

He went on to say he realizes now that he shouldn’t use the word. “I never used it to be racist because I’m not racist. But whenever you’re in a situation where you have to say, ‘I’m not racist,’ you’ve fucked up. And I clearly have fucked up.”

Toward the end of the nearly 6-minute video, Rogan apologized for using the word and said his mistakes should be a “teachable moment” for others.

“I can’t go back in time and change what I’ve said. I wish I could. Obviously, that’s not possible,” he said. “But I do hope that this can be a teachable moment for anybody that doesn’t realize how offensive that word can be coming out of a white person’s mouth in context or out of context. My sincere and humble apologies. I wish there was more that I could say, but all of this is just me talking from the bottom of my heart. It makes me sick watching that video.”

In video of herself addressing the camera, Arie, a four-time Grammy winner, said she empathizes with artists such as Young who are leaving the platform due to Rogan’s podcast interviews spreading vaccine misinformation, but that she is more focused on his racist remarks. Imploring others to delete Spotify, Arie stated that the platform underpays artists and that she doesn’t want to support a company that prioritizes giving Rogan a hefty salary.