Singapore — In a series of Tweets, Rapper Subhas Nair hurled allegations at Mediacorp and an Executive Producer there for using an ethnic slur, censoring and eventually erasing his work a week before they were due to go live.
In a Tweet on Sunday (Aug 15), he wrote: “Mediacorp is racist as f**k. Once, they were going through lyrics for UTOPIA, and I used the word “millies” on the track.
The line was ‘Masek spend our millies money come they missionary’. One of their department heads asked me what the meaning of the word was…”
Mediacorp is racist as f**k. Once, they were going through lyrics for UTOPIA, and I used the word “millies” on the track.
The line was ‘Masek spend our millies money come they missionary’. One of their department heads asked me what the meaning of the word was…
— ROB THE RICH (@subhas_music) Aug 15, 2021
He added that when he explained the word was an abbreviation of ‘millions’, an Executive Producer, one Mark Pestana, replied: “Orh so that’s like n**** talk la”.
So I said, “millions”. And he said “Orh so that’s like n**** talk la” At the table there was another head of department and the producer of the show. No one said anything.
— ROB THE RICH (@subhas_music) Aug 15, 2021
Mr Nair added that he wanted to respond but “they were already trying their best to censor our work and it was too risky in that moment to call him out”.
“Besides, all they ever wanted was to fulfill their KPIs. CNA/Mediacorp does not give a single f**k about migrant workers but they will control the narrative and masquerade their poverty porn as journalism,” Mr Nair wrote.
Besides, all they ever wanted was to fulfill their KPIs. CNA/Mediacorp does not give a single f**k about migrant workers but they will control the narrative and masquerade their poverty porn as journalism.
— ROB THE RICH (@subhas_music) Aug 15, 2021
He also shared screenshots of his conversation with his lawyers after his song UTOPIA – made in collaboration with a band of migrant workers – where he assumed that he shared equal intellectual property rights with CNA.
However, he wrote: “The song had been live on all streaming platforms for nearly a month before the K. Muthusamy video and the ensuing political theatrics, after which CNA removed allmentions of my part from ‘ROAR’ and subsequently removed the UTOPIA track from all streaming services”.
He also added that he re-recorded and released the track UTOPIA. /TISG
TISG has reached out to both Mr Nair and to Mediacorp for comment and clarification.