Nashville sensation Morgan Wallen — who has ruled the country and pop charts this 12 months — is offering “no excuse” for the racial-slur scandal that threatened to get him canceled in 2021.
“There’s no excuse. I’ve never made an excuse. I never will make an excuse,” Wallen, 30, told Billboard in regards to the video footage that was leaked of him using the N-word in February 2021.
After issuing an apology for his drunken behavior — “on hour 72 of a 72-hour bender” — Wallen met with several black music industry leaders in addition to organizations such because the Black Music Motion Coalition to coach himself.
“I’ve talked to a lot of individuals, heard stories [about] things that I’d have never thought of because I wasn’t the one going through it” he said.
“And I feel, for me, in my heart I used to be never that guy that folks were portraying me to be, so there was a little little bit of like, ‘Rattling, I’m form of actually mad about this a little bit because I do know I shouldn’t have said this, but I’m really not that guy.’ “
![Morgan Wallen performing at the 2023 CMAs.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/12/editorial-use-morgan-wallen-performs-72045149.jpg?w=1024)
![Morgan Wallen in the new issue of Billboard.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/12/morningglowmellie-guidelines-use-billboard-cover-73362306.jpg?w=1024)
And — in his first major interview in two years — the “Last Night” singer admits that he had nobody but himself accountable for the backlash that he faced as radio stations stopped playing his music, award shows declared him ineligible, and his record label suspended him.
“I put myself in just such a s–t spot, ? Like, ‘You actually tousled here, guy.’ If I used to be that guy, then I wouldn’t have cared. I wouldn’t have apologized. I wouldn’t have done any of that if I actually was that guy that folks were saying about me.”
And as an artist embroiled in a potentially career-ending controversy — although his fans never abandoned him — Wallen realized “just how much that folks hearken to me. I don’t think I noticed that, at the very least not at that grand of a scale on the time.”
After learning “how much my words matter,” Wallen said that he’s a modified man almost three years later: “That person is certainly not the identical person l am now.”