Jemele Hill Clarifies Reporting About Status of Her Spotify Podcast Deal

Amid a report that said she was leaving Spotify, Jemele Hill announced on Twitter that her podcast isn’t going anywhere, as of now.

Bloomberg first reported on Friday that Hill’s “Unbothered” network of podcasts, including her own show Jemele Hill is Unbothered, was looking for a new home, as the company “has reconsidered its expensive podcasting strategy.” This report came four years after Spotify gave $200 million for Joe Rogan’s podcast, after which Hill said she would like to see Spotify give them that much money to black podcasters.

“What I would like to see,” Hill told The New York Times in 2019, “is for them to hand $100 million to somebody who is Black.”

However, through these rumors and reports, Hill claims she is continuing her podcast as scheduled, and that she never asked for the same deal as Rogan.

“A lot of what’s been reported just isn’t true,” she said on Twitter. “My podcast hasn’t been cancelled. I never asked Spotify for $100M. This s— is truly comical.” 

Hill is a former ESPN personality, who left in 2018 amid political controversies within the network. In 2017, Hill called former President Donald Trump a white supremacist and asked advertisers to boycott Cowboys owner Jerry Jones after he suggested that the team could bench players who “disrespect the flag,” comments that got her suspended by the network. She joined The Atlantic later that year, and started her podcast at Spotify not long after in 2019.