Justin Bieber collaborators Migos weigh in on their “Looking For You” partner racist joke furor. It overshadowed the track we would all still be talking about if a five-year-old video of Bieber reeling off the N-word hadn’t surfaced three days after the banger dropped last Thursday.
Another old, racist Justin Bieber video is coming down the pipe Wednesday morning GMT, again via the UK’s The Sun newspaper .
So whatever happens, tonight is the eve of an ending of sorts.
But in the few hours left, an MTV news interview with Atlanta rap trio Migos has arrived. In it, Quavo, Takeoff and Offset shared their views on Bieber’s years-old video in which the then 15-year-old singer is seen telling a tasteless gag with a punchline that repeats the N-word .
The ATL group also dish on “Looking For You ,” the surprise slice of R&B/hip-hop that they and Bieber unleashed last week to the delight of an unsuspecting Internet.
During the interview, Migos said they hadn’t seen the viral video of Bieber’s racial slur . But, the trio told MTV they don’t believe the singer is racist , even though they didn’t like the jargon he used.
Bieber has since released a lengthy, seemingly earnest apology in which the 20-year-old admitted he was sorry “for offending or hurting anyone with [his] childish and inexcusable mistake .”
“It wasn’t a good move to make but he accepted what he did — and he don’t use that lingo around us,” Migos told MTV . “We ain’t personally see the video anyway we just heard about, but it feels [like it’s] in the past and that’s not what we condone.”
Migos continues: ” We do our music together and we’re good through music. So [we] don’t feel like he’s a racist .”
The red-hot ensemble reveal they hooked up with Justin on “ Looking For You “ when he was in ATL. Bieber followed the yellow brick road South in February, when he fled Los Angeles in the wake of an egging-related police raid on his former Calabasas mansion.
“He was in Atlanta, he came to our city and we linked with him,” Migos recalled of the studio session with Bieber, adding:
“It wasn’t no ‘send’ situation — we [were] in the booth and working with him was pretty cool.”
Giving props to the Canadian heartthrob’s studio method, they added, “He’s laid back, he be chillin’, he’s a young n—a so it was fun.”
“We knocked it out in about 20 minutes like we’d do any other track,” Migos adds . “It wasn’t no pressure or nothing like that.”
The “Versace” rappers – who dropped their “ New Atlanta “ track featuring Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan and Jermaine Dupri the same day as “ Looking For You ” — also addressed the raised eyebrows reaction to their pair-up with Bieber.
( Video: via Instagram @dibu _.)
“You’ve just gotta make sure that all the music you make makes sense, and we feel like it made sense when we did it,” Migos explain.
Bieber hotfooted it to Mexico this week amid intense media comment on the N-word debacle .
The embattled singer and Khalil Sharieff joined singer Rita Ora and a large group of pals in Playa del Carmen, while staying in a sumptuous villa.
Bieber has reportedly already left, for the moment, destination unknown.