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ABC/Fred WatkinsCommon is the latest musician to publicly denounce R. Kelly, in light of the disturbing revelations made in Lifetime’s six-part expose detailing the singer’s reported crimes.
Tuesday, the “Glory” rapper was spotted at LAX by TMZ and asked to share his thoughts on the Surviving R. Kellydocumentary, particularly on how the music industry was complicit in allowing Kelly’s alleged serial abuses.
“If it wasn’t just black women who R. Kelly had been molesting and abusing, if it wasn’t just black women, he would’ve been attacked by the system in a different way,” Common told TMZ.
“And instead of trying to be like, ‘Let’s go try to resolve this situation and free these young ladies and stop this thing that’s going on,’ we were just like, ‘Man, we rocking to the music,'” the Chicago loyalist added.
Common then admitted his own fault in not using his platform to enact change.
“I’m guilty of that too myself because I didn’t stop and be like, ‘Yo,’ and speak against this. R. Kelly’s from my hometown,” the Grammy-winning artist admitted.
“At the end of the day, he’s a human being. He has his issues and we see that, but I can’t condone that and I shouldn’t be allowing that to happen,” he added. “We failed our community as Black people.”
The rapper joins a chorus of entertainers who have vowed to stop supporting Kelly, including John Legend, Tank, Ne-Yo and more.
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