Shawn Mendes Apologizes for Old Racially Insensitive Posts

The twenty-one-year-old from Toronto, Canada, has carved out quite an impressive musical career for himself, with countless hits under his belt, including the popular singles  “Stitches” and “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back.”

The star said that he would regularly look up YouTube tutorials on how to play the instrument. “I would type in things like, ‘How to play beginner songs on guitar,'” he said in an interview with The Telegraph. “I taught myself these chords and slowly started to get the hang. I was obsessed with it. Every day I’d play and think, I’m not good enough yet; I need to get better. Then I’d play for hours and hours.”

Mendes began his music journey by uploading covers to the since shut-down platform, Vine, in 2012, before sharing his videos to various other social media outlets.

Whether it was his teen-heartthrob vibe, impressive vocals, or all-around aura, the aspiring musician garnered a fairly substantial fanbase. So much so, that, by August 2014, he was the third most-followed musician on Vine alone.

After transitioning into writing his own music, the star was scouted by his now-manager, Andrew Gertle, who convinced Mendes and his father to go down to New York and sign to Island records.

Mendes released his first-ever official piece of music, The Shawn Mendes EP, under the record label, which instantly climbed to number 5 in the music charts.

His full-length debut album, Handwritten, which gave us the global number 1 hit single, Stitches, came out on top at number 1 in both the U.S. and Canada.

The singer has since released 2 highly-acclaimed albums – Illuminate in 2016, and most recently, his self-titled album last year.

Earlier this year, Mendes was part of a Calvin Klein “Find your Youth” campaign. The campaign featured Mendes posing alongside several other young celebs including Kendall Jenner and Noah Centineo.

People fully lost their cool and their minds after seeing the topless snaps.

At a recent Q&A session, which he always holds with fans after his gigs, a fan put Mendes on the spot by asking him about a handful of racially insensitive tweets that the star reportedly made back in his Vine days.

Although, most of the time, he will answer fans without hesitation, some of the remarks clearly made him squirm a little. Back in July, he awkwardly avoided a question about his relationship with singer, Camila Cabello, and then, a few days later, appeared to walk out of a session after being asked by a fan about the inspirations behind the song “Señorita.”

In a since-deleted tweet, the star addressed the criticism, writing: “Hey! There was no bad intention here. If you were there you would have known it was the last question & that’s why I decided to turn it into a light-hearted funny goodbye! Sorry if that upset anyone, I adore you guys! No need for any negativity.”

“Ok, so this is kind of a hard question and I don’t want you to take any offense to it at all,” the fan explained in a recording that was shared on social media. “I just kinda wanted to do it for black Twitter, black Shawn stans everywhere out there.”  

“In the past, there’s a lot of kind of ignorant tweets I guess I could say, kind of hurtful offensive tweets that you have tweeted before. “I just want to know like, why have you– and I think recently it’s been deleted, and I don’t know if it was you or if it wasn’t. But if it was – or if it wasn’t – why hasn’t it ever been acknowledged and why hasn’t there ever been anything about it.”

The tweets, which are believed to have been deleted, were reportedly from 2013, back when the singer was a rising Vine star. According to Pop Buzz, one of them allegedly read: “i can see the black coming out in you lauren!” in response to a friend who was ranting on his timeline. It was also alledged that he posted an Instagram snap back in 2012 of his friend, with a caption containing the N-word.

After listening to the fan’s question, the singer had this to say…

“I just think that a lot of things need to be moved on from, but also I had friends when I was like 14 who would like take my phone and post things of them and they thought it was funny that I had like 2 thousand followers,” he explained. “At the time I was not thinking about it,” he continued. “I had no idea I was going to have 50 million followers – which doesn’t make it any better.”  

The star wanted to make it very clear that making offensive comments of that nature is not in his personality. “I apologize for everything insensitive that I said in the past but with that being said, yeah I think – that’s not my personality.”

While some people believe that he should be able to move on and better himself, others thought that his apology was half-hearted.

Many believe that he should have taken full accountability for his past comments, rather than passing on the blame to friends. Another A-lister whose past has come back to bite them is Gwen Stefani, who’s been accused of having a long legacy of “cultural appropriation.” Keep scrolling to reveal the true extent of the singer’s problematic past and why fans are now deeming her “canceled.”