Spotify has quietly pulled 113 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience after footage emerged of the divisive podcaster previously using racial slurs more than 20 times on the show.
American musician India Arie posted an edited compilation video to her Instagram highlights late last week, which showed a large number of times Joe Rogan had used the N-word and other slurs against Black people on his podcast over the years.
She said his “language around race” was the reason why she was following suit of other artists like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash by removing her music from the streaming platform.
The hit podcaster — who inked a USD$100m deal with Spotify in mid-2021 — issued an apology on his own Instagram at the weekend, in response to the backlash.
“I’m making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” he said.
“There’s a video that’s out, that’s a compilation of me saying the N-word. It’s a video that’s made of clips taken out of context of me of… 12 years of conversations on my podcast, and it’s all smushed together, and it looks fuckin’ horrible, even to me.
“Now I know that to most people there’s no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that.”
Rogan stressed that he hasn’t said the offensive term in years, but he used to believe that it was okay if he said it “in context” of the conversation.
“Now, 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,” he said.
“I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”
According to the website JRE Missing — which automatically updates with every removed episode of Rogan’s 1700-odd catalogue — Spotify has taken down episodes that feature questionable far-right commentators like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulous, as well as multiple episodes with disgraced comedian Chris D’Elia and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.
