Kalush Orchestra won Eurovision 2022, now they are Ukraine’s most prominent band. The Village Ukraine Editor-in-Chief Yaroslav Druziuk talked to the band’s lead vocalist Oleh Psiuk and producer Vanek Klymenko about the frantic six months since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, popularising Ukrainian music abroad, and five years of working without weekends.
Six months since a Eurovision victory and 30 concerts a month
We are recording this conversation with two of the people behind Kalush Orchestra in mid-August. Ivan Klymenko, the band’s co-founder and producer Zooms in from his Kyiv office while lead vocalist Oleh Psiuk tunes in from Poland, where he has just arrived from Italy as part of the tour with the rest of the band. We ask whether they can tally up the total number of concerts they played over the past several months and what it was like to perform at Glastonbury, one of the world’s biggest music festivals.
– If I understand correctly, this week you already performed in Italy and now you’re in Poland again for a show in Lodz?
OLEH PSIUK: Yeah, I’m in Krakow just now, then we go to Lodz and a few other Polish cities. Then we’ll go to Ukraine, then Poland again. Then Amsterdam, and then a huge North America tour [in October and November]. We’ve really taken off, travelling all over the world now.
– Have you counted how many shows you’ve played since Eurovision? Or have you lost count?
PSIUK: I lost count. We were also playing shows before Eurovision...
VANEK KLYMENKO: What’s our record, 33 shows in a month?
PSIUK: Something like that, I can’t remember the exact number. But yeah, more than 30 in one month. But the thing is, it was easier in the past, [the gigs usually took place in, like, school] assembly halls. We’d usually play two shows back-to-back: the first group of people leaves, the other group arrives, [so there are] two gigs in the same space. But we’ve also had days when we would play three shows in three different cities in one day. Brutal. That was insane! Even I felt like, “Whoah, this is a bit too much for me.” [he laughs]
– I imagine that it’s probably all a big jumble in your head at this point and it’s difficult to point out any highlights. But you got to perform at Glastonbury, and I wanted to ask you about it…
KLYMENKO: Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go though I really wanted to. Even though it was my dream more than Oleh’s. [he laughs]
PSIUK: Definitely!
KLYMENKO: I love music festivals, I’ve been to more than a dozen festivals around the world. I’ve been a musician for several decades now, most of which I spent playing mostly for myself and dreaming about these huge festivals. Even just to attend some of them. That our band would represent Ukraine at Glastonbury was testament to the fact that dreams do come true. But there’s still room for progress; I’ve always wanted a Grammy. Now I can almost believe that it could be achievable. We just have to believe in it, and to work really hard.
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Kalush Orchestra / Maciej Rukasz
– But Oleh, tell me what it’s like to play at Glastonbury. I think we are spoiled now and we’re taking it for granted that four Ukrainian bands performed at Glastonbury this summer or that Vakarchuk [Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, lead vocalist of Okean Elzy, a famous Ukrainian rock band] got to play with Coldplay [at a concert in Brussels on 9 August 2022]...
PSIUK: There’s lots of different festivals, concerts, stages…It’s true, it was Vanko’s dream, he’d probably feel a lot more inspired by being there. Whereas me, well, great. I’m glad [I was there].
KLYMENKO: I think it’s all just a huge jumble in Oleh’s mind right now. I know the guys’ schedule, and it’s much more difficult to play 20 gigs in Europe than 35 in Ukraine. Because they’re constantly on the move, they lose track of time, lose track of what day of the week it is, what the date is…
PSIUK: And what country we’re in!
KLYMENKO: They really do forget what country they’re in, yeah. You take an overnight flight, sleep for two hours, you’re still half-asleep when you go to a soundcheck, from soundcheck to the show. After the show you’re getting picked up straight away, taken 400 kilometres to the next airport. Then you spend another night on the plane, and another van picks you up again. Maybe you can even sleep for a few hours in that van, though seated…I spend some of the time with the guys in Europe, so yeah, it really is easy to forget [where you are]. You no longer know whether it’s Glastonbury or Sziget…That’s why Oleh replies like that. [he laughs]
– And yet I want to ask, what were the highlights of the European tour for you? For example, I saw that you performed with the displaced Ukrainian children in Italy and that you played at Stockholm Pride in Sweden.
PSIUK: You know, there are two things that matter: not the popularity of the festival, but the number of people and their response. For instance there weren’t loads of people in Stockholm, maybe 6,000 or 7,000, but they were very lively in their response, singing along to our songs. There were some Ukrainians there, too. There were 20,000-25,000 people at [our] show in Romania, but they were much quieter than the 7,000 in Sweden.
When you get an immediate response from the people in the audience, it gives you energy. Even the oldies like us, who seemingly can no longer be taken by surprise. [he laughs] It’s one thing if people know Stefania [the song that won Kalush Orchestra Eurovision], but when they know some more obscure tracks, we’re like “Whoah, we’re gonna give you the shit!” [he laughs]
– This is a very trivial question, but where has the audience been most receptive?
PSIUK: In Kalush!
– And what about the European tour? Although Kalush and Ukraine are Europe. [he laughs]
PSIUK: Ukraine is Europe!
Refusing to play at a Montenegro festival, Ukrainians at Sziget, and the US tour
Kalush Orchestra were set to perform at another festival, the Sea Dance Festival in Montenegro. However, they decided to turn down their invitation because Nina Kravitz, a Russian DJ, was also part of the festival’s line-up. “We will not perform on the same stage with a Putin-supporting Russian artist. The organisers declined our appeal to cancel Kravitz’s performance. So we’re cancelling our own performance there instead, as promised,” Oleh Psiuk commented on the band’s decision at the time. We ask them how the band reached that decision in the context of the wider conversation about the performances of Ukrainian and Russian musicians at European music festivals.
– Tell me how you’ve reached the decision to cancel your performance at Sea Dance. As far as I understand, you were in touch with the festival’s organisers: you asked them to revoke the Russian musician’s invitation to perform, then they refused you…
PSIUK: There wasn’t much of a discussion. We were told to appeal to the organisers. We did. They floundered. So that’s what we decided. That’s it.
KLYMENKO: The decision was obvious for us: we immediately decided that we won’t perform if she remains on the line-up. We wrote to the organisers, they sent us an internal memo, which looked a lot like the one they published later. It’s their decision, and we’ve also made ours. Moving on.
– Why do you think this happened, did the organisers fail to grasp the context, or was it something else?
KLYMENKO: It’s weird, I don’t know, I’d like to get to the bottom of this. I had a hunch that the organisers were somehow connected to this artist, maybe they were friends, or maybe one of the artist’s managers was working with the organisers. I'm just guessing here. Maybe it wasn’t about these connections…
PSIUK: Then it was about an advance they paid. [he laughs]
KLYMENKO: Yes, but they also lost Kalush Orchestra, one of the headliners. I think if it wasn’t anything to do with their connections with the artist, it must have been about a lack of understanding of the context, definitely. A lack of willingness to get to the bottom of what’s going on, lack of willingness to search for information about this artist. Whatever.
It was important for us to take a stance, to make the organisers think. Maybe it will have some kind of an effect on who they will invite to perform at the next festival. And if it somehow brings about a future in which fewer Russian artists get to perform, that’s great, it means we’ve done our job.
– And we probably have to consider this incident in light of the wider conversation that we’re having in Ukraine, in particular concerning Ukrainian musicians’ performances at the Sziget festival. There are two points of view: first, that Ukrainian artists don’t have to refuse to play at festivals where Russian artists are also performing because they would then be creating more room for the Russians. Second, that the Ukrainians have to immediately refuse to take part in such events. I think you’ve already staked out your position when you refused to perform at the Montenegro festival. But would your decision be different if it was a different festival, for example Sziget?
KLYMENKO: You have to look at everything contextually. You’re trying to find out what we’d do in different circumstances…
PSIUK: I feel like you’ve just quoted Alina Pash…
– It’s not just Alina, many people made that argument, this discussion is still ongoing.
KLYMENKO: Well, yes, Slukh also wrote about it…But I don’t like discussing hypotheticals. We had a concrete set of circumstances, we’ve demonstrated how we act in situations like that. Let the other artists make their own decisions, they are their own masters.
PSIUK: It’s a rhetorical question as far as I’m concerned. You see how impressionable I am, what I think about all these festivals, so I don’t care. [he laughs] Is Glastonbury cooler than Sziget?
KLYMENKO: Glastonbury is at the top, bro. We’ve never played anything that big before.
PSIUK: Basically, we don’t care about not being able to play whatever festival, because in the future we will get to perform at all the ones we want to perform at anyway. What difference does it make then?
– Tell me about your North American tour; you’ll have shows in the US, a few shows in Canada. That’s also a great experience for a Ukrainian band. What would you like to get out of it, what experiences are you looking forward to?
KLYMENKO: I wouldn’t single out the US among other countries, the expansion of Ukrainian music to the global scene is a new experience in itself. This is a large-scale project not just for Kalush Orchestra but for the entire [Enko] label. Just recently nine or ten songs at the top of the Apple Music chart [in Ukraine] were recorded on our label. I mean that we’re responsible for about 30% of songs in Ukrainian charts – we’ve made significant achievements here. But this is a new challenge for us, and we’ve always loved new challenges, we’re not interested in remaining in our comfort zone, where everything is familiar. Our new challenge is to be the ambassadors of Ukrainian music to the world. This is, like, super interesting.
Apple Music Ukraine chart / August 23
There’s a great example of how one small and corrupt country’s music became an entire new genre that has had an effect on music all over the world, and that’s Jamaica. Based on its ethnic music, Jamaica created a unique musical genre, reggae, which gave rise to so much more. I love this music, I know a bit about it. Just look at today’s trending songs, those that have been on the Billboard charts over the past 10-15 years – many of those tracks have some Jamaican influences. Either their rhythm sections, or the base, or the vocals. Jamaican music has transformed music all over the world, different styles and genres. And that’s just the music of one small, corrupt country. Why can’t Ukraine have a similar influence? I believe that it can.
We are a musical country. If my sources are correct, there are over 200,000 traditional folk songs in Ukraine. We have an immense musical history which goes back centuries. We are a strong nation with a strong musical culture. But unfortunately, we have so far only been able to share a very small part of that legacy with the rest of the world. Ukrainian music has something to teach musicians all over the world. So it’s our duty to develop that in every way we can. We don’t yet know how to do this on the same scale as Jamaica, but we have to take some steps in that direction before we can figure it out. That’s what we are doing right now.
The US tour is one of those steps. Touring America, meeting with major labels, meeting some American artists, and stopping by some music offices. Singing. Obviously the majority of our audience will be made up of the Ukrainian diaspora. But there will also be at least a handful of Americans.
– Well and that gives you certain media opportunities: to perform at KEXP, Tiny Desk or a late-night show.
KLYMENKO: We’re really trying to invite ourselves to KEXP right now, I would really love to do a live performance there. We’ve got lots of ideas. And we have a great partner, Sony Music, and they are really interested in promoting us on a global scale. They’re helping us find producers, musicians, studios and other contacts abroad. In truth, we’ve already had lots of meetings, but I won’t share any teasers just yet because it’s still unclear how it will play out. But we’re planning great things – things that other Ukrainian artists haven’t done before.
Popularising Ukraine abroad and art in a time of war
“I wrote the Stefania chorus,” Vanko Klymenko casually drops. He’s been in music business for over 20 years and has had many roles: he is a former member of the Salto Nazad band, the producer of Kalush Orchestra and the founder of the music label Enko. His current projects include Kalush, Alyona Alyona, Skofka, and Kola, a newcomer to the scene who nonetheless already has almost four million views on YouTube and is part of Apple Music’s Ukrainian top chart. We ask Klymenko and Psiuk what opportunities Kalush Orchestra’s Eurovision victory has opened up for them, and about the developments in the Ukrainian music industry.
– You’ve just described your vision for popularising Ukrainian music, but we’re talking about a narrow window of opportunity [that opened up following Eurovision] which won’t last forever. Obviously, what happened to Go_A after Eurovision is different, but there is a sense that they have somewhat let their opportunities slip after the contest: both media opportunities and opportunities to release new songs to consolidate their success. How are you approaching this window of opportunity?
KLYMENKO: The main difference between Go_A and us is that they are an indie band. We do have a label, a structured organisation with a large team, different divisions and so on. We have a more structured approach to all this. Kalush Orchestra has already recorded over 15 international songs. We haven’t released them yet, but they’re there.
– By international you mean collaborations with foreign artists?
KLYMENKO: Both collaborations and just songs which mix several languages; several songwriters from different countries were involved in their making.
So only time will tell if we’re using this window well. I think we are. Because so far we’ve made use of all the opportunities that had opened up before us. Again, I don’t want to drop any hints or be a loudmouth, if I were to say now that we’re going to collaborate with these people with these big names…I’d rather let it happen first, then we’ll reveal what it is.
– It was also a question about new music. Oleh, could you talk about how you approach it? I understand that it’s difficult to write music while you’re on tour. And talking to artists these days, a lot of them say that it’s difficult to find words when your country is at war. What’s it like for you?
PSIUK: I really felt this in March, when the [full-scale] war had just started. It’s true that that’s what it felt like. But you know, as ambassadors of our culture we have to support it and share it as far and wide as we can. Especially now, when we’ve become Ukraine’s voice in Europe. That’s why we’re trying to draw people’s attention to the war, talk to everyone about it, describe everything that’s going on. And so we come up with these very theme-driven, metaphor-laden songs, which seemingly have nothing to do with the war…
–Stefania has also become something of an anthem for this moment, even though it is not about war at all.
PSIUK: Well, right. It’s quite a unique song: it was written long before the war, was in no way related to the war, and then it ended up at the national selection for Eurovision. Then it climbed to the top of Apple Music charts – back when that was still an achievement. [he laughs] Then it won the national selection, then it won Eurovision. I mean, it’s been all over…I just hope it will also become the anthem of our victory.
– There is also an interesting conversation currently about [the representations of] war in art. On the one hand, there’s already this whole crop of songs about Bayraktars and Javelins, songs that basically cash in on the war. On the other hand, it’s also difficult to write about more abstract, decontextualised things. I know some musicians who haven’t written anything at all in the past six months. How are you dealing with these challenges?
PSIUK: It’s a matter of presentation.
KLYMENKO: Yes. There are different artists; there are some who find writing songs difficult in general, who need to be inspired. We belong to another caste of musicians, those who don’t really believe in inspiration. I mean, we don’t believe that one is entirely dependent on inspiration. Because inspiration can be manufactured, produced. Inspiration should depend on you, not the other way round. You can create your own inspiration, you can create it everyday. It all rides on your ability to control your emotional intelligence and to channel your energy into art.
I’ve been writing songs for the past 20 years and I was the one who wrote the chorus of Stefania – because I have this skill, to channel any sort of energy into songs. Good energy, aggression, joy – anything. If something happens in my family, if there’s something to grieve, I can channel this grief into song, too.
I think it’s the same for Oleh. When Oleh and I just met, before we started working together, I asked him to write a couple of demos for me. And Oleh wrote 93 songs for me. We’re really on the same wave like that, our synergy is different from the usual producer-artist relationships, we’re more like musical buddies who’ve ended up in the same band and do everything together. And we really clicked in terms of how we both can channel any sort of energy into songs. We don’t depend on inspiration that much, because we work so hard. We believe that it’s just an excuse for their laziness when people say: “I wasn’t inspired.” We get up at 6 AM and work late into the night, producing our own inspiration.
Kalush Orchestra – Stefania
– I have to ask you about Stefania specifically, which is still a viral hit. Yesterday I was in an Uber and Stefania was playing on the radio, children are being named after your song, there’s even visibly more bucket hats around… Ivan, do you think this is the most popular song you’ve ever come up with? Just in terms of its reach, in terms of the number of people it’s moved in some way, both in Ukraine and abroad.
KLYMENKO: I’m glad about this but I don’t really want to think in those terms, like “This must be the biggest thing I’ve ever come up with.” You know what they say: do good things but don’t hold on to them. It’s like that in art, too: just create, create, create, and don’t think about the outcomes. I realise that we’re working, that we’re doing something right, that we’re somehow benefiting the culture and the development of music. Meanwhile, we are also gaining a ton of experience and are sharing this experience with young artists.
– Oleh, but you’ve got to admit, when children are named after your song, when Ukrzaliznytsia [Ukrainian Railways] launches an entire project geared towards you, that’s cool, right? And you can just go ahead and tell us if you’ve enjoyed the Olezhka chocolate [Olezhka is a diminutive for Oleh, Psiuk’s name]. [he laughs]
PSIUK: Wow, you really do follow our stuff, respect! That’s real respect, have you watched all of our [Instagram] stories? Vanko, have you heard about this?
KLYMENKO: First time I hear about it!
PSIUK: Remember the Olenka chocolate? Someone’s come up with an Olezhka one. [he laughs] It was nice, they gave it to me.
Regarding Stefania, I’ve been thinking about it…I realised that when things happen gradually, step-by-step, that’s one thing. Everything has happened quite gradually for us: the band was formed in 2019, then it took us a long time to get to all this. Maybe everything would have been different if I won Eurovision straight after the infamous 2018 battle – this would have definitely been a huge emotional moment. But right now I feel that all my emotions are subdued. I have never worked in a perfume store but I think if you’re working in a perfume store it becomes difficult to enjoy any particular scent.
KLYMENKO: I’ll just say this so you get a full picture: Oleh has not had a single day off in the past four years. Not a single one. There was never a Sunday he could take off to rest. Right now he’s about to take five days off for the first time in four years. We’re trolling him for doing this. [he laughs] But it’s Oleh’s decision, he made up his own mind. I did have days off. He’s just made it a goal of his – to not have any days off. Isn’t that true, Oleh?
PSIUK: Yes, although it’s almost been five years, not four. [he laughs]
– So what are you going to do with your time off?
PSIUK: I’m gonna rest. [he laughs] I’m planning to switch off completely for a while. I warned everyone a month ago, you know. I’ve just realised that unfortunately I’m at the crux of a lot of things. So I guess we’ll see whether anything will fall apart in these five days. I think it was a pretty cool experience for me. And now I want to see to what extent I’ll feel recovered, reinvigorated.
Ukraine’s new music industry
– You guys talked about the efforts to popularise Ukrainian music abroad, let’s now talk about what’s happening in Ukraine. I’ve got a sense that over the last six months we’ve had an explosion of new artists, Ukrainian tracks go viral on TikTok, you’ve got a cool thing happening with Kola. Is this a temporary occurrence related to [Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on] 24 February? Or is this a new wave?
KLYMENKO: It’s definitely a new wave. That’s how it’s always been: a ton of new artistic projects emerge during revolutions and wars. That’s what happened here in 2014, a new boom and a new wave of Ukrainian music.
I’m looking at what’s happening there and my heart sings. I’m overjoyed for all those musicians, for the enormous swathe of new Ukrainian music that’s being created. And very different types of music.
Moreover, because many people stopped listening to Russian music, there are entirely new [genres] being created, things that haven’t existed in Ukraine before. I think music now will be a lot more diverse, there will be lots more sub-genres, styles, trends. This is already happening. I’ve discovered at least ten cool artists in the last month alone. And I’m continuing to discover them.
– Well, there is another point of view, which is that there were always plenty of talented artists in Ukraine but the [music] industry itself was problematic. Business development in the music industry, copyright, royalties were all at issue. But just like in other industries there is a sense that the war has offered an opportunity to destroy everything and start anew. Is that what you’re also feeling? If so, where should we begin?
KLYMENKO: It’s already starting to change. That’s how it is, and that’s really cool. Of course the industry is changing. But there is also a whole enormous new source of inspiration for artists. Many artists do depend on this inspiration, and when they see these monumental changes, they gradually start to move away from [just making music for] the charts.
Everyone has mobilised now: I know countless artists who were a lot less productive before the war, and now they’re five times more productive than they used to be. These changes are not just an effect of industry transformation, but are caused by the artists’ internal shifts. They’ve started doing more, putting out better-quality work, they’re more active. And they’re finally receiving some feedback, their songs are finally hitting the charts, they’re getting some royalties, they’re seeing people’s interest in their music. And that motivates them to do even more. So now everything’s beginning to look more like it should in a civilised country.
Kola – Чи разом?
– Oleh, do you feel those changes coming?
PSIUK: All of the charts are feeling those changes. Let’s consider what happened when our track Zori ended up at the 70th spot on Apple Music. All over the media people were saying “[Whoah!] Kalush are on the 70th spot with a Ukrainian song, that’s impossible!” But now no one is surprised that all songs in a Top 10 chart could be Ukrainian songs performed in Ukrainian.
KLYMENKO: Well, maybe not all ten anymore…
PSIUK: Yes, but there was a time when all ten were [Ukrainian], these things change all the time.
KLYMENKO: At least 70% are performed in Ukrainian, yes. That’s never happened before. Oleh is right: in the past, if a Ukrainian song ended up in a chart among Russian songs, you’d think “Whoah, crazy!” This has changed now, that’s true.
As for the labels – all of the Ukrainian labels are undergoing major changes now. I know this because I’m personally involved in this, I follow what’s going on and talk to my colleagues.
– Well, and you yourselves have entered the market and shaken it up a bit.
KLYMENKO: And we’ll keep shaking it up! We’re about to introduce new modes of collaboration on our label, we’ll grow our portfolio of artists. I hope cool new labels will also emerge, they already are emerging, to be honest. I’m following what’s happening, a few stars have already been born. And I’m not even just talking about artists, but about collectives, which I think have great potential.
– But you won’t name them because they’re your competitors?
KLYMENKO: They’re colleagues, not competitors. And no, I don’t want to name any names just yet. But look at who’s at the top of the charts, who’s associated with what label, and you’ll notice.
– Friends, I’ve got one last question. It’s been bothering me for a while. I respect Kalush a lot, you really are doing a lot to promote Ukrainian music. But there’s been something I can’t quite grasp. I was at the Kalush show at Atlas Weekend 2021 and when you introduced one of your songs you used a racial slur to refer to African Americans. That seemed strange to me, especially coming from a hip-hop band, you should really understand the context…
– This was right before the Patsany Buri track. You compared Kalush to rough neighbourhoods in the US and used the word.
PSIUK: Alright, maybe it wasn’t a fake.
KLYMENKO: By the way, I didn’t know about that. Oleh has once used this word in his [Instagram] stories, we then had a long conversation about it, he publicly apologised. But, Oleh, maybe you talk about it, you’ll be better able to explain.
PSIUK: Well look, I only realised after all these accusations that people who have no understanding of hip-hop culture, who don’t appreciate N.W.A. and many other artists, they don’t have the whole picture. So it can seem that this is a manifestation of racism or something like that…
– But you realise that it’s one thing when Ice Cube from N.W.A. uses this word and a whole other thing when some white guy from Ukraine does.
PSIUK: That much is clear. I did realise that, yeah, I really shouldn’t do it at all, and I no longer do it, I’m more mature now.
KLYMENKO: This comes from his love and respect for this culture. Oleh is such a fan of African American music, he can tell you all about Eazy-E and N.W.A., about their songs, their origins. He knows even the unreleased tracks, he knows a lot about the genre. It’s just that in [the town of] Kalush the guys who are into hip-hop decided among themselves that it was okay to use this language. And when Oleh came to Kyiv, he didn’t quite understand…When I first rebuked him, he said “What do you mean? Why can’t I? That’s a way of showing my respect.” I remember explaining that when this word is used by someone from Ukraine, it takes on a different meaning. I don’t think Oleh knew this early on.
The key thing is that we never used this word to express disrespect. It was just ignorance. Because if we’re talking about racism, we’re prominent anti-racists. First of all, there are people from different races at our [label]. Second, we grew up listening to African American music, we love African American culture. I love soul, funk, jazz, hip-hop, I know a lot about this music, I have a huge collection of records. I’ve idolised some of the African American artists since I was a kid. How can we be racist?
– Just to draw this discussion to a close. Oleh, would you ever use this word again?
PSIUK: No, I’ve not used it for a long time now. Come to our shows to see for yourselves whether I use it or not.
– See, it was at your show that I heard it. And I’ll just say it again, it sounded really wrong, and exactly because you draw so much inspiration from hip-hop culture and so should understand this context.
PSIUK: You should also be aware that Kalush is undergoing a profound transformation. Back then I still had a lot of that Kalush style, I was ignorant as to how to behave on stage, what to say to people. I still sometimes talk nonsense on stage. [he laughs] But I’ve got more self-control now.
KLYMENKO: That’s true. [he laughs] I have so many stories to tell…When Oleh had just arrived in Kyiv from Kalush the first thing he asked was: “So you can carry your laptop around with you on the streets?” [he laughs] There have been plenty of those.
Oleh genuinely didn’t know that those things just cannot be said on stage. We are sorry if we offended anyone, Oleh has already apologised on Instagram. We publicly acknowledge that all our team is against racism. We have so much love for everyone. And obviously if we love hip-hop, there could be no room for racism.
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