While the British prime minister, PepsiCo and David Schwimmer, among others, are publicly denouncing the artist formerly known as Kanye West, Aubrey O’Day has other plans.
In a series of posts and replies to other users on X, the former Danity Kane member is defending her decision to attend both of Ye’s sold-out comeback shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, last week. O’Day was first called out for going to the shows after an X user reposted a video of the singer talking about seeing Ye for the second night in a row and asked why she didn’t talk about going to the concerts on X.
“Now why wouldn’t you share with Twitter that you went to see Kanye 2 nights in a row??” the user posted, tagging O’Day. “All that hootin and hollerin about Diddy’s abuse, but you fail to keep that same energy with Kanye.”
O’Day has spoken out against Diddy for years. Danity Kane was formed on Diddy’s series Making the Band and signed to his label Bad Boy Records. O’Day was kicked out of the group in 2008, and in an appearance on Call Her Daddy, she alleged that the falling out happened because she refused to comply with non-musical requests from the rapper. In the years since, O’Day has continued to speak out against Diddy, including in the recent Netflix documentary Sean Combs: The Reckoning.
To X users, O’Day’s support of Ye stands in direct opposition to her outspokenness against Diddy. The original X post ended by calling the singer a “f—ing hypocrite.”
Rather than ignoring the post, O’Day replied with a defense of her decision to see Ye.
“I can hold two truths at once,” she starts before saying that she’s lived through and does not excuse abuse. She then says that she does not believe that “engaging with someone’s art” is the same as “[co-signing] every opinion or action they’ve ever had.” O’Day says that if this were the case, many people in the entertainment industry would not have careers and that there is more “nuance” to these situations. “If supporting art required endorsing every belief of the artist, none of us would have careers, or playlists.”
This explanation was not enough for people who do not agree with her stance, with another X user replying to her post by calling her a hypocrite and saying “by your logic we should ignore all of the things you said about Puffy because he makes good music.”
O’Day again took to the social platform to double down on her statement, explaining that a “blanket ‘cancel everything’ stance” is not realistic for her as an artist and that the user she is replying to is “not accounting for real-world complexity.”
“The idea that you have to erase art to prove morality, or perform constant outrage to stay ‘consistent,’ isn’t integrity..it’s a simplified version of ethics,” she continues. “I’m allowed to hold nuance.”
The singer then says that she has remained consistent on her position on Diddy for 20 years and had her life and career negatively impacted by doing so “in ways you’ll never fully understand.” She concludes by saying she will no longer be “outsourcing my values to a comment section anymore.”
In another response, she wrote: “You’re pushing a binary moral model-good people get total support, bad people get total rejection. Real life doesn’t work like that. Humans hold complexity all the time.. we love people who’ve hurt us, we consume work from imperfect creators. We live in nuance and still know exactly where our values stand.”
Although she claimed to be done interacting with comments, O’Day replied to a few more users who questioned her position. In these follow-up interactions, she continued to reference “nuance” and push her idea that engagement does not mean endorsement. In one reply, she brought up the Epstein Files, saying, “A lot of $ in the Epstein files funded a lot of sh– that you like.”
O’Day eventually concluded the conversation on X with a standalone post, not responding directly to anyone anymore.
“Most people want clean heroes & clean villains, because it’s easier. I’ve seen too much in my lifetime to simplify people in that manner,” she wrote. “I understand the complexity, and I choose every day how I engage with it consciously.”
O’Day’s X back-and-forth defense of Ye happened the same day the rapper’s appearance at London’s Wireless Festival was thwarted by the British government when the entity denied his entry into the country, citing his history of antisemitism. As a result, the festival — which previously lost four corporate sponsors when Ye’s headlining spot on the lineup was announced — was completely canceled.
