PETA Slams Ye & The Game’s Use of Skinned Monkey Photo to Promote Song: They ‘Do Not Belong to Us to Abuse’
Trending on Billboard
Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and The Game are under fire by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) after they posted an image of a skinned monkey to promote their upcoming collaboration.
On Thursday (Jan. 13), Ye and The Game posted identical images on Instagram to promote their new song. “MY LIFE WAS NEVER EASY,” they captioned their respective posts.
PETA President Ingrid Newkirk gave Billboard a statement on Friday (Jan. 14) in response to the image the rappers posted on social media: “The photo is reminiscent of the monkeys PETA has found, sometimes heads, sometimes hands, sometimes the whole body, in meat markets around the world and it makes it clear that when you remove the fur you can’t miss that there’s a person in there, that they are fellow primates, and do not belong to us to abuse for any purpose — not in laboratories, roadside zoos, movies, or meat markets.”
In a 2018 Billboard interview, The Game said he still backed the controversial “Off the Grid” MC following his cringeworthy thoughts about slavery being a “choice” in the viral TMZ interview. “Kanye will always be a friend of mine & although I might not necessarily agree with his views on certain topics, that is what separate us as individuals,” he wrote in an email. The two have a long musical history, including their 2006 collab “Wouldn’t Get Far” and the Ye-produced “Dreams” off of The Game’s 2005 debut album, The Documentary.
The two were also spotted in the recording studio recently alongside fellow MCs A$AP Rocky and Pusha T as well as football player Antonio Brown, which has been stoking the flames on recent collab rumors.
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