YG's 'My Krazy Life' Is Back on Streaming Services With Scrubbed Version of "Meet the Flockers"
On Monday, YG's My Krazy Life was returned to DSPs following a week of backlash.
YG's 2014 album My Krazy Life has returned to digital streaming platforms.
Lyrics targeting people of Asian descent on the track "Meet The Flockers" prompted the removal of the album on DSPs including Spotify and Apple Music. On Monday, an edited version of "Meet The Flockers" was posted on YouTube, it omits the derogatory opening lyrics.
Following a week of internal controversy, YouTube removed the track "Meet The Flockers" from its site. YouTube staffers called for the company's Trust and Safety team to remove the song, and their request was denied on March 22nd.
"We find this video to be highly offensive," the email read, according to Bloomberg, "and understand it is painful for many to watch, including many in Trust & Safety and especially given the ongoing violence against the Asian community. 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."
After a week of backlash from employees, the company decided to remove the video from its platform. The song is about burglary in general, but in the first verse, YG explicitly targets Chinese neighborhoods, rapping:
"First, you find a house and scope it out Find a Chinese neighborhood, cause they don't believe in bank accounts."
"YouTube has an open culture," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "Employees are encouraged to share their views, even when they disagree with a decision. We'll continue this dialogue as part of our ongoing work to balance openness with protecting the YouTube community at large."
With anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes on the rise since the COVID-19 pandemic, YouTube says it has removed over 97,000 videos and 46 million comments in the last quarter of 2020.
Okayplayer has reached out to YG's team for comment. Stay tuned for further updates.
This article was originally published on April 5, 2021, it was updated on April 6.