Kendrick Lamar ‘threatens to remove music from Spotify over hateful conduct policy’

Kendrick Lamar has reportedly threatened to pull all of his music from Spotify after disagreeing with their new hateful conduct policy.

The streaming service announced the ‘Hate Conduct & Hateful Conduct’ policy earlier this month, which attempted to bring its ‘editorial decisions’ in line with the company’s values.

‘When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence), it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator,’ the policy reads.

This led to the removal of R Kelly – accused of grooming an underage girl in a BBC documentary – and XXXTentacion’s songs from certain playlists; the Florida rapper has been accused of domestic abuse in the past.

However, Spotify now seems to be rolling back the changes after representatives of artists including Kendrick contacted Spotify’s chief executive officer Daniel Ek and head of artist relations Troy Carter to complain about the new policy..

Whoa. Are they censoring the music? That’s dangerous.
— Punch TDE (@iamstillpunch) May 10, 2018

It is thought there are major concerns over censorship and also the decision to only punish black artists and no white artists.

‘Whoa. Are they censoring the music? That’s dangerous,’ Punch, the president of Top Dawg Entertainment, posted on Twitter. Top Dawg releases the music of rappers Lamar and Schoolboy Q

Several acts also threatened to pull their music if the current situation persisted. In response to the frustration aired by artists, Spotify is in discussion about rolling back the changes.

It also appears that they’ve agreed to restore XXXTentacion’s tracks to platform playlists, Bloomberg reports.

In other Kendrick news, the rapper recently shut down a fan who repeatedly used the N-word at his show after being invited on stage mid-set.

Kendrick Lamar brought a white fan on stage to rap "m.A.A.d City"....and then she dropped the n-word 🤐 pic.twitter.com/JeMaI0UsBv
— MASS APPEAL (@MassAppeal) May 21, 2018