Nick Cannon has been working in the entertainment business full-time since the mid-'90s.
For all of his successes, however, Cannon has spent more time in the news for the
wrong reasons than for his wins. It's time to unmask the shady side of Nick Cannon.
Back in March 2014, Nick Cannon announced that he'd be dropping a new album on April Fool's Day
which, as The Guardian noted, was "controversial by design." Not only
did the record's name — "White People Party Music" — raise eyebrows, but Cannon pushed the envelope
further when he dressed up as a White character called "Connor Smallnut" to promote its release.
In a since-deleted Instagram photo, Cannon showed off white skin and red hair and wrote:
"It's official... I'm White!!!"
He went on to add a bunch of racial stereotypes masked as hashtags, including:
"#FarmersMarkets #FistPumping #CreamCheeseEating"
While some fans found it funny, others were quick to call him out for his racist humor.
As “Good Morning America” noted, the persona, quote,
"sent the internet into overdrive" as Cannon was accused of donning whiteface.
Rather than apologizing, the reality TV host defended his humor on Twitter, writing:
"Hold up... What the f*** is "White Face"??? Did I just create a new term??? Nice!!! LOL"
He kept going, showing zero remorse by adding:
"I didn't know it was going to be this hard being White!
I'm exhausted with all this 'privilege' LOL."
Cannon later justified the Instagram post, as well as the album itself,
on “Good Morning America,” saying:
"I was doing a character impression. Blackface is
about oppression [...] There's a big difference between humor and hatred."
In 2017, Nick Cannon left his "America's Got Talent" gig after hosting 231 episodes
between 2009 and 2016. It wasn't a career move, however. According to a lengthy Facebook post,
Cannon claims he was, quote, "threatened with termination by Executives because of
a comedy special that was only intended to bring communities closer together."
Said special was Showtime's "Stand Up, Don't Shoot" in which Cannon went after NBC,
claiming that he wasn't allowed to be himself and speak the way he naturally would. He said:
"Sometimes I wish I could say the stuff that I want to say [...] but
I can't say that. I can't talk like that 'cuz that would mess up the White money."
When Howard Stern asked Cannon if he was worried about losing
his job over the comments, he laughed and said:
"If they fire me from AGT [because of] the things I've said, then I
can sue them and I can create a whole controversy — 'NBC hates black people!'"
Unfortunately, those threats fell on deaf ears. Venting his feelings on Facebook,
Cannon refused to acknowledge that he may have offended NBC,
saying he didn't care about the network's money and that his:
"soul won't allow [him] to be in business with corporations that attempt to frown on
freedom of speech, censor artists, and question cultural choices."
After Christina Milian and Nick Cannon co-starred in 2003's "Love Don't Cost a Thing",
they dated for a few years until Milian discovered some incriminating dirt on her man.
Taking a walk down memory lane in 2019, the songstress revealed on E! News' "Just The
Sip" how she broke into her then-boyfriend's phone because, quote, "the password somehow
worked on the first check. Then next thing you know, for like a month I was reading messages."
Calling him her "first love," Milian admitted it was a difficult truth to swallow.
"It was unreal that it was happening. He was living at my house [...] and it was just like,
'Wait, under my own roof this is happening?' It kind of blew me away."
Cannon decided to address Milian's confession,
but rather than offering an apology, he got fired up, telling Power 106:
"I don't think I did anything wrong. I wasn't cheating, you got to be in a
relationship to cheat [...] If you go looking for something, you gonna find something."
Cannon's comments only got more cringeworthy from there. He said:
"If I am careless enough to allow myself to get caught, then that means I wanted to get caught.
The word is careless. You know what careless means? I could care less."
Asked what his easily hackable phone password was, he quipped:
"0-0-0-0. I didn't give a damn!"
While Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey were married,
Cannon got dragged into his wife's feud with Eminem when the latter released
"Bagpipes From Baghdad" in 2009. On the track, Marshall Mathers asked:
"Mariah, what ever happened to us? [...] Nick,
you had your fun, I've come to kick you in your sack of junk."
Not one to remain silent, Cannon responded with a since-deleted Tumblr post. He wrote:
"I don't know why no one has stood up to your b**** a** yet. But I guess it's going
to take a corny, wack rapping, boy toy from Nickelodeon to set you straight."
Things sure got corny when Eminem poured oil on the fire with 2019's "Lord Above"
and Cannon fired off some seriously weak comebacks, including his own widely panned
diss track, which we'll get to in a moment. Cannon also said on Power 106:
"We should change his name from Eminem to Percocet. What's the pill old people use?
We are going to call him Cialis. Bring your walker,
get out your wheelchair Eminem and pop whatever you want to pop."
Cannon also challenged, quote,
"Grandpa Marshall" via Instagram to "battle like a real legend" on MTV's "Wild 'n Out".
Despite the fact that his jabs have never quite hit the mark,
Cannon confidently told Billboard in 2020 that he had won the feud. He proudly proclaimed:
"I think he knows better now. If he keeps talking about me, I'm gonna keep talking back."
Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey split in 2014 and finalized their divorce in 2016, but,
along the way, they vowed to keep a healthy relationship for the sake of their twins,
Moroccan and Monroe. Cannon even tweeted:
"I will never say anything negative about [Mariah Carey] We are forever a family rooted in love."
And yet, he appeared to do just that with his 2016 freestyle, "Divorce Papers."
He raps, talking very plainly about his ex:
"When the world hate you because of what she sing
about, I should've listened to y'all tips — bring 'em out."
After this, he addresses his custody agreement, making it clear he's unhappy with it:
"My daughter said 'Daddy why yo' eyes in tears? Because the last time I dropped
you and your brother off I didn't get a call next day and it felt like years."
Then, he comments further on his feelings regarding visitation stipulations:
"It's f***** up that the time that you spend with your own kids is called 'visitation.'"
Not surprisingly, most listeners thought Cannon was dissing his ex-wife,
but he assured entertainment blogger Karen Civil that this was not the case, saying:
"[The] purpose for creating this 'Divorce Papers' freestyle was not to feed the tabloid chatter,
or even to diffuse it. This was strictly a creative way for me to express my frustrations
with the media, the naysayers, myself, and ultimately with the voices in my head."
In February 2017, Today confirmed that Nick Cannon and his ex-girlfriend, Brittany Bell, had welcomed
their first child together, a son named Golden Cannon. Jump to July 2020 and Bell revealed on
Instagram that she was expecting again and that, yes, the baby daddy was none other than her ex,
Nick Cannon. The caption for the picture showing her baby bump reads: "Cannon ball".
Just a month before, another of Cannon’s exes, model Jessica White —with whom he
was first linked in 2015 — shared a photo of her and Cannon, captioned:
"Always been the love of my life always will be. REAL love can never be broken. You are
me and I am you for eternity. @nickcannon you are a king always remember that s***."
If that timeline seems confusing, don't worry, you're not alone.
White eventually set the record straight, explaining on Instagram:
"Nick and I have been together off and on for years. Their new child
was conceived when we had temporarily broken up."
Adding that, quote, "any child is a blessing," she assured that Bell wasn't a,
quote, "home wrecker at all." Elaborating further, she said:
"Nick was a free man at that time and can be with whoever he so chooses
and for years that person has always been me."
She concluded that she supports him, quote, "through thick and thin." Meanwhile, Cannon
has been completely silent about the matter, allowing his partners to do all of the talking.
While taking over hosting duties on "The Wendy Williams Show" in February 2019,
Nick Cannon used his guest-hosting gig as an opportunity to slam a whole slew of celebs for
no apparent reason. First, he went after Ariana Grande, saying he had just hung out with her
ex, his, quote, "little brother, Pete Davidson," and that they were, quote,
"having cougar conversations." Proudly revealing that he was the one that told him, quote,
'Get you an older woman, man,'" Cannon shaded Grande, saying:
"Them little pop stars, they don't know! They getting Japanese menus tattooed on
their backs [...] I'm joking, but that is Ariana Grande's hand."
He justified his statement by showing the pop star's
infamous misspelled Kanji tattoo. Then he slammed:
"That's some young girl stuff."
Later in the same show, he dissed Mariah Carey's former nemesis, Jennifer Lopez,
by using Carey's classic line — "I don't know her" — and even went after Kylie Jenner,
saying that he'd rather his daughter grow up to be
like Danielle Bregoli — better known as Bhad Bhabie — than Jenner. He reasoned:
"This girl [Danielle] might have a bad mouth, she needs some guidance,
she needs a whoopin. But, at the same age, Kylie Jenner was getting plastic surgery."
To be fair, Jenner has never actually confirmed getting any
cosmetic procedures done, other than lip fillers.
On a since-deleted episode of "Cannon's Class", Nick Cannon interviewed Professor
Griff — who was thrown out of Public Enemy after making anti-Semitic comments in 1989.
It was during this conversation that he went on a bizarre racist rant,
calling Jewish and White people "savages". He proclaimed:
"The people that don't have [melanin] are a little less. When they were sent to the mountains of
Caucasus [...] the sun then started to deteriorate them, so then they're acting out of fear."
"So then these people who didn't have what we had — and when I say we, I speak of the
melanated people — they had to be savages."
The comments only got worse, as Cannon added:
"They're acting as animals so they're the ones that are actually
closer to animals. They're the ones that are actually the true savages."
Cannon's rant also included anti-Semetic statements in
which he called Black people the, quote, "true Hebrews," proclaiming:
"It's never hate speech, you can't be anti-Semitic when we are the Semitic people.
When we are the same people who they want to be. That's our birthright. We are the true Hebrews."
Shortly after Nick Cannon's racially-charged comments went viral,
ViacomCBS fired him from hosting MTV's "Wild 'n Out", telling “Variety” it,
quote, "condemns bigotry of any kind," and saying they, quote, "were deeply
troubled that Nick has failed to acknowledge or apologize for perpetuating anti-Semitism."
Cannon did eventually apologize, tweeting:
"I extend my deepest and most sincere apologies to my Jewish
sisters and brothers for the hurtful and divisive words that came out of my mouth."
Noting that he has since deleted the interview, he added:
"I want to express my gratitude to the Rabbis, community leaders and
institutions who reached out to me to help enlighten me, instead of chastising me."
Cannon then turned to Facebook where he forgot all about his penance. Claiming that, quote,
"the moment was stolen and hijacked to make an example of an outspoken Black man," Cannon
wrote he was, quote,"disappointed that Viacom does not understand or respect the power of the
Black community." Claiming he, quote, "created a billion-dollar brand," he went on to say:
"Ownership [of Wild 'N Out] was swindled away from me. For Viacom to be so deceptive is no surprise;
they have been mistreating and robbing our community for years."
Saying the network was, quote, "now on the wrong side of history,"
Cannon added he'd "pray" for them, demanding full ownership of the show. Cannon concluded:
"I demand that the hate and back door bullying cease,
and while we are at it, now that the truth is out, I demand the Apology!"
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.