Stephen Jackson and Lil Yachty are seemingly on good terms after the former NBA star called out the rapper for mentioning the late George Floyd in an unreleased track.
Lil Yachty, whose real name is Miles McCollum, shared a snippet of a track during a recent Twitch livestream, according to Rolling Stone and Billboard. The song reportedly featured a lyric about Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in May 2020 after a white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his head and neck for nearly 10 minutes while arresting him.
“Put my knee up on her neck, I went George Floyd,” Yachty rapped on the song, per Billboard.
Jackson condemned the “One Night” rapper in a now-deleted Instagram post, calling the lyric “demeaning” and writing, “Don’t ever say his name, bro. None of y’all knew G. Nothing about him.”
The San Antonio Spurs alum has long been open about the loss of his friend Floyd, revealing in 2020 that the pair grew up in the same Houston, Texas neighborhood.
USA TODAY has reached out to Lil Yachty’s representatives for comment.
Jackson says Yachty apologized for distasteful lyric
In an Aug. 14 Instagram story, the “All the Smoke” podcast host later revealed that he is no longer upset with Yachty after the musician reached out and apologized.
“I took my post down about Yachty because I’m emotional about George. I apologized to him. We spoke and he apologized as well,” Jackson said. “I salute him. Not a lot of people like to own up to when they [expletive] up.”
Jackson added that he agreed a public apology was unnecessary after the two worked things out, and as Yachty understands the frustration caused by the lyrics. He added that he never had an issue with Yachty directly, but rather the idea of it being okay for people to demean the dead.
He later added in an Aug. 15 Instagram post that he won’t be discussing the situation in interviews, adding that “he’s a smart young man” and “We move on from it.”