In recent months, Kehlani has been one of the few celebrities willing to speak about the War in Gaza and voice support for Palestinians. But her advocacy has come at a cost, she told the hosts of The Breakfast Club on Tuesday.
After Israel launched a missile attack on Rafah in May, Kehlani posted a since-deleted video to Instagram calling out other “highly fucking platformed” people in the music industry for not talking about Palestine, according to Them. She apparently said, “You can’t speak? Disgusting!” Her video for her most recent single, “Next 2 U,” which she released in May, opens with words from Palestinian poet Hala Alyan and features Kehlani and her dancers wearing suits with keffiyeh-adorned jackets. She said she raised $555,000 in aid for Gaza, Sudan, and Congo with merch from the video.
On The Breakfast Club, Kehlani explained that she’s always felt a responsibility to use her platform to speak up for what she believes in. “I grew up fully understanding the role of art in liberation ,and that’s not to place myself in alignment with those artists and those revolutionary acts, but it’s to say I understood what it meant to not be silent,” she said.
However, she says being outspoken in her support for Gaza has had professional consequences with magazine interviews, brand deals, and other opportunities tied to the release of her new album, Crash, falling through. “I have experienced a lot of pushback,” Kehlani said. “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” not happen, she said. She added that even though her record label has been supportive, some of the artists she’d hoped to collaborate with backed out. “There were artists that I did reach out to, and someone on the team was like, ‘We don’t fuck with her.’”
Regardless, Kehlani said she has no regrets about speaking about what’s happening in Gaza: “I can look myself in the mirror and know that I did the right thing.”
