Adam22 recently drew the Internet's ire for choosing to interview Pop Smoke's alleged killer Blockstar on No Jumper, and the backlash was swift and brutal. Moreover, during their conversation, Blockstar spoke on what his thoughts are on his sentence and the deadly situation as a whole, and it was quite a controversial topic of debate online. However, Adam came through with a social media video recently addressing the issue and speaking on fans' concerns with the move. In the clips below, he talks about why he chose to interview the now free man and why he found it important to learn more about the New York rapper's murder.
"I didn't do that interview because I don't care," Adam22 expressed. "That's what a lot of people seem to think. 'Adam just doesn't give a f**k.' That's not the case at all. I did that interview because I thought it was an important historical record of somebody involved in one of the most tragic, insane stories in rap history. I knew Pop Smoke, I was texting him for probably a year. We spoke on camera for a couple minutes for Rolling Loud in 2019, like, a few months before he passed. I have a huge amount of respect for him. I'm not ignorant to what a gigantic impact he had on New York City. I have nothing but respect for him, and definitely didn't want to enrage his friends or family. I actually wanted to do a piece of content that I thought they would be able to benefit from.
Adam22 Responds To Criticism Over Interviewing Pop Smoke's Alleged Killer
"By having this conversation, people can really understand what goes through the mind of somebody who's capable of doing something like that," Adam22 continued. "I think if you watch the interview, it's pretty obvious that I wasn't glamorizing it and that I was trying to have the tough conversation with him that I thought this situation warranted. A lot of people seem to think I'm the first person who's ever interviewed a killer, which is completely not true. [...] Pop Smoke, famous rapper. Beloved. Who did Gangster Williams [whom he interviewed] kill? 40 drug dealers slash gang members that you and I don't know. So it's kind of hard to, like, work up that empathy. [...] I remember when Vlad took a lot of heat because he interviewed Keefe D... I thought it was pretty impressive that Vlad stood on his principles and did that interview. It was an important story.
"The truth is that [these interviews] correct the record for a lot of people and let them know how these situations really went down," Adam22 concluded. "I also think that the Blockstar interview about Pop Smoke was important for that reason, too. [...] So to me, it was important to have that. I knew at that time that he was going to do the interview with somebody else if I didn't do it." Check out his full remarks in the video above.