| Nashville Tennessean
Big Loud Records has announced it will “suspend” country star Morgan Wallen’s recording contract after the singer screamed racial slander over the weekend.
“In the wake of recent events, Big Loud Records made the decision to suspend Morgan Wallen’s recording contract indefinitely,” the record company announced Wednesday.
According to the statement, Republic Records – Big Loud’s partner in Wallen’s latest release, “Dangerous” – “fully supports Big Loud’s decision and agrees that such behavior will not be tolerated.”
A video shows Morgan, 27, being dropped off at a home and telling a friend to “take care of it … (slander)”, apparently referring to someone else in the group.
“I am ashamed and sorry,” Wallen said in a statement after the video was posted on Tuesday by TMZ. “I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slander that I would like to be able to remove. There is no excuse for using this type of language, ever. I sincerely apologize for using the word. I promise to do better.”
Wallen had not addressed the incident on Wednesday morning on any of his social media channels. Comments were restricted to Wallen and Big Loud’s Instagram accounts.
Outside Wallen’s circle, the industry’s reaction was swift. A spokesman for iHeartMedia – the largest radio owner in the United States, with more than 800 stations – said they removed Wallen’s music from the rotation.
He’s also noticeably absent from Spotify’s country playlist “Hot Country” as well as Apple Music’s “Today’s Country” – despite currently having five of the top 10 songs on Billboard’s “Hot Country Songs” chart.
The cable network CMT also announced that it would remove “Wallen appearances from all of our platforms”.
“We do not tolerate or tolerate words and actions that are in direct opposition to our fundamental values that celebrate diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Last year, Wallen became the biggest new country music star. He topped the Billboard 200 album chart for the past three weeks and was named New Artist of the Year at the CMA Awards.
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The year was marked by other incidents. Wallen was arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct outside Kid Rock’s honky-tonk bar in downtown Nashville, and was prevented from performing at “SNL” after a maskless party with strangers in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (The show invited him back 2 months later.)
Mickey Guyton was among the country artists who responded to the news. The singer – who recently became the first black female solo artist to receive a Grammy nomination in a country category – tweeted, “Hate is deep.”
A prominent reaction came from singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, whose song “Cover Me Up” was recorded by Wallen and is included on his album at the top of the charts.
“Wallen’s behavior is disgusting and horrible”, Isbell tweeted. “I think this is an opportunity for the country music industry to give this place to someone who deserves it, and there are a lot of black artists who deserve it.”
While other singers suggested that Wallen’s actions did not reflect Nashville and country music as a whole, Maren Morris countered: “It is actually representative of our city because this is not his first ‘fight’ and he just demolished a huge record of streaming in the last month, regardless. We all know it wasn’t the first time he used that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs, without recourse. “