Tory Lanez thinks people turned on him amidst the Megan Thee Stallion scandal to protect their brand.
It’s been quite the dramatic year in Tory Lanez‘s career and the Canadian rapper is reflecting on the fallout he had with a legion of artists after his personal reputation was hit by the accusation that he shot Megan Thee Stallion in the summer of last year.
During the onset of the quarantine, Tory Lanez had one of the biggest platforms on social media, a regular Instagram Live session where he was his own DJ called Quarantine Radio. Prior to ever being banned or any assault allegations, Tory was perhaps the most talked-about celebrity when quarantine life began.
It’s been almost a year since his career and character was impeached after his rumored former beau and Grammy-winning rapper Megan Thee Stallion accused him of opening fire on her causing serious injuries to her foot. During a recent chat with Gillie Da Kid and Wallo on the Million Dollaz Worth Of Game podcast, Tory talked about what it was like having the whole industry seemingly turn against him after the incident.
Gillie Da Kid pointed out the fact that artists started writing Tory off without any evidence against him ever surfacing. The rapper gave a rather understanding response to the question of how he took seemingly being betrayed by people he had worked with in the past. “You gotta understand, people have brands,” Tory replied. “Before I look at Tory Lanez like it’s me, Tory Lanez is a brand. Whatever artist is their brand. At the moment, it wasn’t the look to put their brand on it. Unless you were somebody who stood so far into the brand, that your brand was so you, that your personal life is reflected on your brand. When it started there were very few people like that on the outside, but on the inside it was love. That was the weird thing about it for me.”
He continued, “When it comes down to artists, I still understand the business side of it, so I never really hold friction there. When things get right, it’ll be alright. Just like now, I’ve been living a regular life. People are coming back and taking pictures, but eight months ago it might not have been the mood.”
Interestingly enough, Tory says the people who publicly shunned him still came around and showed love for him and his music. The rapper says he sees nothing wrong with that turnaround and explained that he focuses on who shows him love and not people hating on him or being negative. “Even the people who came out and said anything about me, a lot of them, after the fact or after the music came out, they called me like ‘I still f**k with you, just at the time, XYZ,” he said. “But there’s nothing wrong with that.”
While many, including the host, would disagree that “there’s nothing wrong with that,” Tory maintained that while it may seem that way to us in real life, in the business, you have to separate the artist. “There’s something wrong with that in our world – in the world where we grew up. And sometimes people have a wrong idea of how that’s separated, but I understand that those worlds are separated,” Tory explained. “But not everybody was raised like me…I don’t expect them to be. However, I gotta move how I gotta move,” he added.
The entire Million Dollaz Worth Of Game podcast is over an hour long, and Tory goes on to talk about coming out on the other side of the incident and what his career looks like now. You can watch the full interview now on YouTube.
