Tyga has removed his “Ay Caramba” music video following criticism over the clip’s offensive Mexican-American stereotypes.
During an interview with LA’s Power 106 radio station (watch below), the rapper explained that he worked with a Mexican sound engineer to record the song and has “always done Latin records.”
“I started seeing a lot of people offended on it and I was kind of confused, so that’s why I didn’t respond and took time … to do my research a little bit and tried to ask a lot of my friends that I grew up with that are Mexican [for their opinion],” he told the radio hosts.
He brought up his involvement in YG’s “Go Loko,” which Tyga is featured on, as “paying homage” to the Latin community without “any disrespect in it.”
On the new controversy, Tyga continued, “It’s hard because I grew up my whole life in Mexican culture being in LA, so it’s kind of hard to separate the two. But this video, I can understand. … It was meant to be a funny video but not make fun of… That’s what I want people to understand. This video was not to make fun of Mexican culture or Latin culture.”
The deleted video — which has been up on YouTube for more than a week and was only pulled down after the radio interview — saw Tyga in a fat suit playing a character named “Gordo” eating tortilla chips, driving a lowrider and effecting a fake accent. He also played the host of a TV dance competition show with a fake mustache and a dancer named “Spicy Rico.”
Tyga explained that he “definitely didn’t have any intentions to offend anybody.” He said that apologizing about the music video is “important to me… if anything, I’m hurt if they’re hurt.”
Tyga explained that his character in the now-deleted video was supposed to be a “childlike kind of character that loves junk food. He loves watching the shows he loves watching.”
“I had no intentions of offending anybody,” Tyga said overall. “If people are offended, I really apologize.”
See the full interview below:
