I haven’t really sat and thought about that.” Wallen also noted that he “checked into rehab in San Diego for 30 days, just to try and figure out why I’m acting this way, do I have an alcohol problem, do I have a bigger issue.”Īsked by Strahan whether the increased album sales indicate that country music has a race problem, Wallen responded, “It would seem that way. We tried to calculate how much it actually spiked from this incident and we got to a number around $500,000 and we decided to donate that money to some organizations, BMAC being one.” ( GMA noted that the Black Music Action Coalition did not respond to a request for comment.) Wallen told Strahan that, although the album was selling well prior to the scandal, “ me and my team noticed that when the incident happened there was a spike in my sales. “My manager called me two hours before the video came out and was like, ‘Are you sitting down?’ No one has ever called me and said that to me before.”Īlthough the TMZ segment led to some quick backlash – Wallen was dropped by WME, his records were banned by radio stations and streaming services and awards shows left him off their nominee rosters – sales of his Dangerous: The Double Album soared, spending 24 weeks at #1. Wallen said he first got word of the video’s existence (a neighbor apparently recorded the incident) when his manager phoned to alert him about an upcoming TMZ segment. “I don’t think I ever sat down and said this is right or this is wrong.” “I think I was just ignorant about it,” the singer said.
Repeatedly pressed by Strahan over whether he understands the full impact of the slur, Wallen at one point said, “When I say I used it playfully I understand that that makes it sound like I don’t understand.” I was asking his girlfriend to take care of him.”
It was wrong.” Wallen used the word in reference to a drunk friend (who is white). That sounds ignorant but that’s really where it came from.
“We say dumb stuff together,” the singer added. “I had some of my longtime friends in town and we had been partying that weekend and we figured we’d just go hard for the two or three days that they were there,” Wallen told ABC’s Strahan.