BTS rapper Suga is “embarrassed” that the voice of cult leader Jim Jones can be heard at the beginning of one of the tracks on his new mixtape, according to his management.
“We have our various processes for reviewing our content that are targeted to our global audience, to try to avoid social, cultural, and historical issues, but we also have our limitations in understanding and responding to every situation,” read a statement from Big Hit Entertainment.
“In this case, we were not aware of it in advance, and we lacked the understanding of the historical and social situations relating to the sample. We apologize to those who have been hurt or felt uncomfortable by this.”
Jones had 918 of his followers, including 304 children, commit suicide in 1978 before taking his own life. Part of a sermon Jones gave a year before his death was sampled on “What Do You Think?,” which appears on D-2, a mixtape Suga released last month under his alter ego Agust D.
The song has been re-issued with the sample removed.
According to Big Hit, the sample was “selected by the producer who worked on the song without any particular intentions, and without knowing who the speaker was.”
The track was produced by El Capitxn (aka Korean rapper Jang Yi-Jeong) and Ghstloop.
“Suga himself is embarrassed and feels deeply responsible for a problem that he did not realize.”