Matty Healy, frontman of rock band The 1975, is apologizing for some comments he made disparaging hip-hop culture for its misogyny while insisting that rock music is now 100-per-cent free of misogyny.
Healy, 29, made the controversial remarks in an interview with The Fader, when asked for his opinion about the prevalence of drugs on rock music at the moment.
“One of the problems is the youth of hip-hop,” Healy declared. “At the moment, with SoundCloud rap, it’s become a bit of a drug-taking competition, and that happened in rock and roll. Those things get weeded out the longer those things exist. The reason misogyny doesn’t happen in rock and roll anymore is because it’s a vocabulary that existed for so long is that it got weeded out. It still exists in hip-hop because [the genre] is so young, but it’ll stop. That’s why you have this moment with young black men — Kanye-aged men, as well — talking about their relationship with themselves, which is a big step forward for hip-hop. Drake, for example. But then they’ll be like, ‘But I still got b**ches.’ The scene’s relationship with women hasn’t caught up to its relationship with itself, but that’s something that will happen.”
Healy subsequently took to Twitter to apologize for his words, sharing that part of the interview and admitting he came across as “patronizing, uninformed and reductive.”
He continued in a series of tweets, admitting that “what I said isn’t correct,” but wrote that he may have been misquoted, as what he recalled saying was that “misogyny wasn’t ALLOWED” in rock, admitting that “RAMPANT misogyny” still exists in rock music.
He concluded by admitting he “was simplifying a complex issue without the right amount of education on the subject,” clarifying that he wasn’t apologizing for what he said, but was apologizing “for the fact my words could INSINUATE that misogyny in culture and music is an exclusively hip hop (black) issue. I do not believe that.”
