From shocking criminal charges to controversial statements, these artists have become industry pariahs. Join us as we explore the musicians whose actions and behavior have led to their isolation from the music business. Whether through heinous crimes or inflammatory comments, these artists have burned their bridges.
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00:00You are dangerous.
00:01The judge's words as the disgraced former lead singer of the Lost Prophets was jailed for 35 years.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:10And today we're looking at musicians who were essentially blacklisted from the industry by some pretty heinous actions, comments, and incidents.
00:19This morning watch how federal agents took Sean Diddy Combs into custody.
00:23He's seen in this video entering the Park Hyatt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan with others
00:27when agents from Homeland Security Investigations approach and separate him.
00:31They place Combs under arrest and lead him out the front door in handcuffs.
00:38Rock and country singer Ryan Adams made a splash in the music scene in the early 2000s
00:43thanks to critically acclaimed records like Heartbreaker and Gold.
00:47Love don't play any games with me anymore like she did before.
00:54But in 2019 several women came forward with accusations of harassment.
00:59They claimed that Adams had abused his fame and power
01:02offering to assist them with their own musical ambitions before making romantic advances.
01:08It's challenging because I feel like in many ways I've said all I want to say about him and that situation
01:14but I find it curious that someone would make a public apology but not do it privately.
01:22What made things worse is that they went on to claim that Adams did not take rejection lightly
01:28and actively tried to hurt their careers when they said no.
01:31This all came to light at the height of the Me Too movement.
01:35So you can imagine that people aren't queuing up to work with Adams anymore.
01:40You had a lot of A-list friends that stayed quiet when all this happened.
01:44Did this sort of teach you who your real friends are?
01:47I mean I got friends the whole alphabet.
01:49Yeah.
01:50DaBaby.
01:51One lone incident can be written off as a freak occurrence
01:55but in the case of rapper DaBaby that seemed less and less likely.
02:00Even if I told you still wouldn't understand what happened.
02:02Rather be myself or people look at me don't matter.
02:05Known for several hits in the late 2010s, DaBaby found himself in the news for the wrong reasons.
02:12When he shot and killed a man in 2019.
02:15Though he claimed self-defense, the charges were dropped shortly after
02:19but surveillance footage brought things into doubt a few years later.
02:23I wouldn't have asked this s*** you to ask about it.
02:25In 2020, DaBaby was charged with battery after he assaulted and robbed a music promoter who underpaid him.
02:32And in 2022, he slapped a female fan for setting off her phone's flash in his face.
02:38Simply put, DaBaby's reckless and violent nature has many of his contemporaries thinking twice before working with him.
02:46Somebody press the button.
02:47You know what I'm saying? Somebody press the button. You get what I'm saying?
02:49And I gotta navigate my way through that. I have to navigate my way through that.
02:52Morrissey.
02:53Where do we even start with Morrissey?
02:55The legendary frontman of the Smiths and acclaimed solo star?
02:59Why do you come here when you know it makes things hard for me?
03:05To be so beloved for his music, the man behind the microphone gives new meaning to the word abrasive.
03:11From lighter rock star tropes like throwing tantrums and feuding with fellow musicians
03:16to accusations of racism, Morrissey is the type of guy who just can't help but speak his mind.
03:23Always been outspoken?
03:24No, I'm not outspoken at all. I'm really not.
03:27You're strongly opinionated.
03:29Well, I'm just an ordinary person in many ways.
03:32I just speak the words of ordinary people.
03:36And after decades of stardom, even his most diehard fans have come to realize
03:41that what's on his mind is usually better left unspoken.
03:45These days, even a mention of his name is likely to cause eyes to roll.
03:50I'm just me and I'm not Flash and I don't want to be part of the rock industry.
03:55And so therefore, I think the rock industry just can't deal with people like that.
03:58Ninja from Deontford.
04:01When you market yourself as an incredibly edgy and counterculture musical project,
04:06it's natural to wonder just how freaky you are when the curtains come down and the cameras shut off.
04:13Zeph and South Africa is like a whole style.
04:14It's like a way of thinking and dressing and how things sound and stuff.
04:22Our style is Zeph, so it's just like a South African thing.
04:26For South African hip-hop duo Deontford, and in particular rapper Ninja,
04:31the truly worrying accusations kept piling up.
04:34These included claims of long-standing assault and abuse by one of Ninja
04:38and bandmate Yolandi Visser's adopted children.
04:41Now that you have spoken out, are you scared?
04:46I was scared. I was a lot of scared and all that,
04:48but like I have people that I know that said I shouldn't be scared.
04:53Homophobic comments and accusations of public harassment and highly inappropriate behavior.
04:59Among the accusers are fellow rapper Danny Brown and featured artist Z-Ani.
05:03I never told what happened cause the fear of disbelief.
05:06Belief my brain could not conceive what happened to me.
05:09When some of Ninja's leaked texts to the latter were released
05:12to say it painted him in an incredibly dark light would be an understatement.
05:17CeeLo Green.
05:18In this day and age, the power of social media cannot be understated.
05:22Well, let me tell you all about it because nobody ever asked me about it.
05:25By 2014, CeeLo Green was already in hot water with the feds
05:30after allegedly spiking a date's drink with an illegal substance
05:33before then taking advantage of her.
05:36But when Green took to his official Twitter page to voice his truly baffling views on consent,
05:41the pushback was instantaneous.
05:44It's really unfortunate.
05:46The comments were almost unanimously appalled by his opinions on the subject.
05:51But CeeLo kept on tweeting, showing a bizarre lack of self-awareness
05:55before eventually deleting his account and apologizing shortly after.
05:59Needless to say, the damage had already been done
06:03and his career never truly recovered.
06:05The accusation, it was so untimely and unfortunate
06:09because we were in talks with sponsorship and people wanted to get behind me
06:14about this Vegas venture and a couple of people walked off of me.
06:18Kanye West.
06:19We could create an entire video dedicated to the long list of anti-Semitic, racist,
06:26self-aggrandizing and generally inflammatory comments made by hip-hop legend Kanye West.
06:33So the answer to why I wrote White Lives Matter on a shirt is because they do.
06:41It's the obvious thing.
06:42While at first, his ego-driven rants were seen as a quirky character trait,
06:48as the years went on and Mr. West became more erratic,
06:51his behavior became incredibly hard for his fans and fellow artists to stomach.
06:56This is Satan at the end of the day.
06:58There's a lot of people that feel like we're at the end of days.
07:02These days, Kanye is clearly persona non grata within the music industry,
07:07even if he still retains the power to make a splash with every word that comes out of his mouth.
07:12Can he rebuild his reputation or is the damage already too much?
07:17Only time will tell.
07:18It was like some Black Mirror episode.
07:21They wanted to do everything to prove to me that I didn't have a right to say anything out loud
07:28that went against people who own the media, people who own the music industry.
07:34R. Kelly. Once called the king of R&B, R.
07:38Kelly dominated the charts from the 90s onwards,
07:42scoring hit after hit during a real boom period for his genre.
07:47I believe I can fly.
07:51I believe I can touch the sky.
07:54But when multiple allegations of egregious abuse came to light in recent years,
07:59the world was presented with overwhelming evidence of Kelly's wrongdoing.
08:03This guy wasn't just a one-time offender either.
08:07And when a 2019 documentary entitled Surviving R.
08:10Kelly hit screens, it served as the final nail in the coffin containing his career.
08:16Kelly was later sentenced to 32 years in prison for his crimes
08:20and has been very clearly branded as irredeemable by those who once knew and worked with him.
08:26And showed no remorse.
08:27And in fact seemed to believe that as a music superstar,
08:31he was somehow immune from having to behave lawfully.
08:35Diddy. A rapper, record producer, and actor.
08:39Diddy seemed like a man who could do it all.
08:42Can't nobody take my pride.
08:44Can't nobody hold me down, oh no.
08:48But in late 2023, the career and overall life of this music mogul was turned on its head,
08:56culminating in one of the most shocking downfalls in music history.
09:00The list of allegations against Diddy seems to be endless,
09:04including abuse, assaults, racketeering, trafficking, and more.
09:09This was really big news in the hip-hop space and beyond for a few key reasons.
09:14First of all, the severity of the allegations were utterly shocking.
09:19During the peak of the media frenzy,
09:21it seemed like a day couldn't go by without some new shocking evidence coming to light.
09:26The now infamous Diddy parties have become a part of cultural lingo
09:30and everyone associated with them was left with some explaining to do.
09:34Sean Combs' celebrity parties were legendary lavish affairs.
09:41Glamorous spectacles for the elite, which for this billionaire music mogul,
09:46had also served as window dressing to his allegedly dark, sinister world,
09:52until the veil was lifted.
09:55Gary Glitter. Glamorous costumes and a playboy attitude were part and parcel
10:00of what made Gary Glitter a star in the 70s and 80s.
10:04But the singer of Do You Wanna Touch Me?
10:14ended up becoming one of the most infamous figures in music
10:18when a series of disturbing allegations and full-on convictions came to light.
10:23Glitter was marked as a serial predator who preyed on a number of minors in several countries.
10:29I deeply regret doing what I was sent to prison for.
10:38I've served my time. I want to put it all behind me.
10:46He also maintained a decades-long friendship with the former BBC star Jimmy Savile,
10:51probably the most hated serial predator in Britain.
10:54Glitter served half of his 16-year sentence for his crimes,
10:57but upon being released, he was quickly sent back to prison
11:01for breaching his parole by downloading indecent images.
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11:21Ian Watkins. Lost Prophets were a Welsh rock band
11:25that would probably still be openly beloved
11:27if it weren't for the actions of their lead singer, Ian Watkins.
11:36In 2012, a truly horrific list of allegations began to paint Watkins
11:41in the most terrible light imaginable.
11:44Before long, it became clear that this man was a monster.
11:48One who had abused his fans, several minors,
11:52and was in possession of photographic and video material of a disgusting nature.
11:57In court today, he was barely audible,
12:00offering guilty pleas to a series of horrific sexual offenses.
12:04Watkins was known to casually joke about his crimes,
12:07even as he was sitting in jail.
12:10And the fact that he carried himself like some depraved cult leader
12:13who organized his abuses so thoroughly still sends chills down our spines.
12:19Much of the detail is simply too horrific to report.
12:23What other musicians spring to your mind
12:25when you think about controversies that tanked entire careers?
12:29Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
12:49you