UPDATE: Vanessa Satton has responded to Post Malone's letter with an Instagram letter of her own. She reaffirmed that Post's team as well as others had told XXL that he wasn't interested in being boxed-in as a hip-hop artist. She also stated that Post never declined the Freshman cover -- "because we didn't even get that far." Read her note below.
Original text below:
Many hip-hop fans were surprised to see the absence of Post Malone on this year's XXL Freshman cover, which was unveiled earlier this week. After the cover dropped, XXL's editor-in-chief, Vanessa Satton, stopped by The Breakfast Club to explain all of the Freshman picks as well as why certain artists weren't selected. With regard to Post Malone, Satton said that XXL was told by his camp that he "wasn't paying attention to hip-hop so much" and that he's apparently "going in more of a rock/pop/country direction."
Post has now responded to being left off the 2016 Freshman cover with a letter addressed to "Vanessa, XXL, Internet, etc." that he posted to his Instagram. In the letter, he seems to take offense to Satton's claims that he's abandoning hip-hop and that he should be ineligible for the Freshman accolade simply because he might pull from different genres.
"My love of music should never be questioned," he begins the letter. "I shouldn't be chastised in whichever way I see fit." He then went on to explain that his latest mixtape as well as his upcoming album are both hip-hop above anything else. "I have a hip-hop album coming out in August," he wrote. "I made a HIP HOP mixtape promoting my HIP HOP album."
Toward the end of his, letter, Post implied that he was invited to be a part of the Freshman cover, but he declined because he "was tired and didn't want to take the 6 hour flight to New York."