Anti-Vaxx hip-hop artists

Post Reply New Topic

Ryan Daniel Montgomery (born July 5, 1977), known professionally as Royce da 5'9", is an American rapper and songwriter. He is best known for his longtime association with Eminem as well as his solo career, recording primarily with producers Carlos "6 July" Broady and DJ Premier, as well as ghostwriting for the likes of Diddy and Dr. Dre. Royce is currently one half of the rap duo Bad Meets Evil with Eminem and one half of the hip hop duo PRhyme with DJ Premier. He was also one quarter of the hip hop group Slaughterhouse with Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz and Kxng Crooked. The editors of About.com ranked him No. 31 on their list of the "Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987–2007)".

Fredrick Jamel Tipton (born June 14, 1982), better known by his stage name Freddie Gibbs, is an American rapper. After initially being signed to Interscope Records in 2006, Gibbs recorded his debut studio album under the label. However, he was eventually dropped and the album was cancelled. Gibbs later signed with Young Jeezy's CTE World and released a number of mixtapes through the label, including 2012's highly acclaimed Baby Face Killa. After leaving CTE in 2013, Gibbs formed his own label, ESGN and released his debut studio album of the same name in June 2013. Since then, he has gone on to release four solo studio albums, as well as two collaborative albums with Madlib as MadGibbs and nine mixtapes in total.

Kevin Jerome Gilyard (born February 5, 1986), better known by his stage name Kevin Gates, is an American rapper, singer, and entrepreneur. He is currently signed to Bread Winners' Association with a partnership with Atlantic Records. His debut studio album, Islah, released in January 2016 and peaked at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart.

Royce da 5'9''’s new song, “Tricked,” addresses the many ways in which he believes people in power are fooling the common man. He includes everything from record label politics to capitalism as a whole, and notably takes medical authorities to task for the promotion of vaccines.

"From day one at the hospital they target our children
Say they gonna immunize ‘em they somehow get autism"

Royce’s son is on the autism spectrum, and in a new interview with Complex, he defended the lyrics and his beliefs linking vaccines and autism.

“I have a child on the spectrum. All of my kids have been vaccinated. Within the last couple of years, I started being just real, real information junkie. I started doing a lot of fact-checking and a lot of reading—a lot more reading than I was doing,” he said. “You got the regular facts that get presented to you, and then you have the other facts that you got to go research. Well, I found that I was able to draw a correlation between autism and vaccination. I found vaccinations link back to autism in many ways.”

After Complex’s Shawn Setaro pushed back against these claims, Royce doubled down.

“It’s not a danger, because I’m speaking the facts,” he said. “People who are against the anti-vaxxers, where are their facts at? What facts do they have? Was there something that America told them? Because I operate under the edict that America is guilty until proven innocent.”

“It hasn’t been disproven. You’re telling me what you want to believe, and I’m telling you what I want to believe. It’s just that simple. You don’t have any facts that can say that I’m wrong,” Royce continued. “You’re just telling me what you believe, and I’m fine with you believing that. But don’t try to tell me what I can say and what I believe. I believe what I want to believe. And I say what I want to say. So you feel like I can believe it, then it shouldn’t be anything else to talk about.”

He’s not the first rapper to include anti-vaxxer lyrics in their songs. Last year, Freddie Gibbs rapped about rejecting vaccines on “Palmolive”:
"2018, I’m finna reclaim my f*cking time and cop the Rollie flooded
Maxine Waters, f*ck your poison, keep your vaccines off us"

Kevin Gates also expressed anti-vaxxer beliefs in a 2016 Rolling Stone interview.