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B.o.B. denies any claims that he's "anti-Semitic" after students at a Florida university protested his upcoming show over lyrics in a song he released six years ago.
In an interview TMZ published on Tuesday, August 23, the "Airplanes" rapper, born Bobby Ray Simmons, Jr., rebuked the accusations of anti-Semitism made by members of the Jewish community at University of Central Florida. Following protests of his appearance at the college's Welcome Week event Pegasus Palooza, B.o.B. told the outlet that he has no issues with any specific group of people, and the show will continue as planned after "everything got worked out."
“There were threats to cancel the show, but everything got worked out,” B.o.B said. “I feel like a lot of things got blown out of proportion from that whole time period."
Students at UCF previously told FOX 35 in Orlando they're upset their school is giving the rapper a platform. They claimed he never apologized for including, what they believe, are anti-Semitic lyrics in his song "Flatline" and wanted him removed from the lineup. The song was released in 2016 as a response to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson after he shot down B.o.B.'s past claims about the world being flat. B.o.B., who just dropped his new album Better Than Drugs, addressed the claims and said he plans to clarify his past comments about the Earth and other conspiracy theories on a new song for his upcoming album Elements.
“I actually have a song called ‘TED Talk’ that I’m about to release and I’m pretty much just going through everything that happened, everything that I was going through personally during that time frame," B.o.B. said. "Just during the whole flat earth thing, ‘Flatline,’ just a lot of things came from that.”
His upcoming show will act as a warm-up to his upcoming U.S. tour, which kicks off in Athens, Ga on August 27. Watch the entire interview with the "cancel culture survivor" above.