New K-pop group LNGSHOT, who debuted earlier this month with the song “Moonwalkin,” is already facing controversy after one of the members suggested that his role model was Tory Lanez, who is currently incarcerated for shooting Megan Thee Stallion in 2020.
The four-piece boy band debuted earlier this month through Jay Park’s label More Vision, but they’ve courted controversy after member Woojin said he is a huge fan of Tory Lanez. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the group was asked about their musical influences, and Woojin said that his “role model” is Lanez.
He was also spotted wearing official Tory Lanez merch that read “Free Tory.”
The Canadian rapper has continually proclaimed his innocence in the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion, which he was convicted of in 2022. In his first on-camera interview behind bars, he claimed that he has “never been violent towards a woman.”
Lanez is currently incarcerated at California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo County, where he was transferred following a stabbing incident at the California Correctional Institution in May last year.
“There is definitely a very big misconception about me … that I’m this monster,” he said in his interview with NBC News last month. “I feel like I was catapulted into this poster child for the unprotection [sic] of Black women, and it’s just so unlike me. And I’ve never really had a chance to express that. But you can look at my criminal record. I don’t have one, I never had one. And I feel like, you know, that connotation that I would do anything of this monstrous proportion is just completely incorrect, and it’s wrong.”
Check out more reactions to the controversy from K-pop fans below.