Spotify added a censored version of rapper YG’s “My Krazy Life” back to the streaming platform Tuesday after it was removed over accusations of racism.
The album was removed over lyrics in YG’s famous song “Meet The Flockers,” Genius originally reported. “Meet The Flockers” was also removed from YouTube and the album was removed from Apple Music.
YG’s 2014 debut album ‘My Krazy Life’ has returned to digital streaming services after briefly disappearing this week following controversy over anti-Asian lyrics in its track “Meet the Flockers.” Those lyrics have been removed. https://t.co/aUtQhoSkI3
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) April 6, 2021
The song lyrics to “Meet The Flockers” were accused of containing anti-Asian lyrics.
“First: You find a house and scope it out, Find a Chinese neighborhood, ‘Cause they don’t believe in bank accounts,'” the original lyrics said. (RELATED: Spotify CEO Regrets Decision To Restrict Music Artists For Allegedly Horrible Behavior)
Now, the song is back up on all platforms with the lyrics, “find a, find a neighborhood,” Genius reported.
The recent controversy over the 2014 rap song started when YouTube staffers posted on internal message boards criticizing the lyrics for encouraging potential robbers to target homes of Chinese-Americans, Bloomberg reported.
YouTube’s Trust & Safety board originally decided against removing the video, citing the company’s Educational, Documentary, Scientific or Artistic (EDSA) context policy, according to the outlet.
“While we debated this decision at length amongst our policy experts, we made the difficult decision to leave the video up to enforce our policy consistently and avoid setting a precedent that may lead to us having to remove a lot of other music on YouTube,” YouTube executives told staffers about the decision at the time, according to Bloomberg.
YG’s song “Meet The Flockers” has faced widespread criticism from the Asian community in the past.