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Kehlani is opening up about how their unwavering support for Palestine caused deals and other opportunities to fall through.
The California native stopped by The Breakfast Club on Tuesday morning, June 25, to talk about her new album CRASH. During the conversation, Charlamagne Tha God brought up their recent stance on the Palestine-Israel conflict and asked how the music industry responded to their advocacy for the Palestinian people. Kehlani said the record label continues to support them, but there has been a lot of pushback. The 29-year-old revealed they lost out on numerous deals and other opportunities.
"I have experienced a lot of pushback," Kehlani explained. "I've experienced a lot of loss. I've experienced a lot of things that were promised and set up for this rollout and album to happen that were supposed to be a lot of 'firsts'... yeah, magazines and these things... brand deals and opportunities that we're sad to lose but at the end of the day... I don't regret doing something that I — I can go to sleep at night. I can go to sleep knowing that, like, what I learned to be as an artist I'm aligned with."
Kehlani is one of the few artists who have stepped up to defend the Palestinian people in recent months. They made several social media posts about their thoughts about the war and also raised money to support victims in Gaza. They recently teamed up with Nöl Collective for limited-edition T-shirts that were screen-printed in Ramallah in honor of their song “Next 2 U." Over $550,000 was raised for the people of Gaza, Sudan and Congo.
Amid all the backlash they faced, Kehlani recently went on Instagram Live and addressed the artists who were supposed to contribute to their new album but ghosted them. During the interview, Charlamagne asked the singer about the other artists who flaked. They elaborated that it was more the teams for the artists who ignored their requests.
"There are a lot more people involved on artists teams than just the artists," they explained. "And it also wasn't every single feature. There were people who didn't get it back in time or it wasn't aligned with the timing of their album. I didn't mean every single artist, but there were artists that I reach to and someone on the team was like 'We don't f**k with her' or they said this and another thing made it to me..."
Watch the entire conversation between Kehlani and The Breakfast Club below.