If life existed in a vacuum, my stance on this question would be straightforward: no, you should not separate the art from the artist, because supporting the art is in some way, supporting the artist. But life is not lived in a vacuum, so the answer becomes much more complicated. At the very least, I don’t think you can fully separate the art from the artist, and even attempting to do so is much more difficult than people make it seem. The question is not just whether you should separate them, but whether you realistically even can.
It makes sense to look at music, because this debate almost always ends up there. Music is one of the most direct forms of art. An artist creates something, releases it and audiences consume it. So in theory, the connection between artist and art should be clear. But in practice, especially in the current era of virality, that connection is not as strong as it used to be.
A good example of this is Silento and his hit song “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)”. The song, along with its dance, became a defining moment for Generation Z culture. While it wasn’t the first song-dance combination to go viral, it helped push forward the kind of internet-driven music culture we now associate with platforms like TikTok.
What’s important here is that for most people, the song has completely outgrown Silento himself. Those who know the dance or feel nostalgic about that era probably don’t have any real attachment to Silento as an artist. The song exists more as a cultural artifact than as a reflection of its creator. That makes things more complicated when you consider his criminal background, where in 2025 he pleaded guilty to the murder of his cousin. If someone plays “Whip/Nae Nae” at a party today, it’s hard to argue that they are actively supporting him in a meaningful, intentional way. At that point, they are engaging with a memory, a trend or a shared cultural moment.
The Friday before my 14th birthday, “Tha Carter V” by Lil Wayne was released and it was one of my first experiences streaming music on my own. Because of that, the album is tied to a specific kind of nostalgia for me. It represents independence, discovery and a certain moment in my life more than it represents Lil Wayne as an individual. But as I got older and became more engaged with politics, his public endorsements and statements started to conflict with my own views, which complicated how I engaged with the same music. Listening to “Tha Carter V” didn’t feel entirely neutral anymore, but it also didn’t feel like a direct endorsement of his beliefs. Instead, it exists in a kind of in-between space, where my personal attachment to the music competes with my awareness of the artist behind it. This adds another layer to the debate, because it shows how separating the art from the artist is not just about the artist’s actions, but also about how our own values change over time. In that sense, the question becomes partially political: Engaging with art can feel like participating, however indirectly, in the broader platform that the artist occupies.
This is where the idea of separation becomes unstable. On one hand, the argument that “supporting the art supports the artist” still technically holds, especially in a financial sense. But on the other hand, the way people actually interact with art — especially viral, short-lived or nostalgia-driven content — often removes the artist from the equation entirely. The art takes on a life of its own. In cases like this, separation might not be fully possible, but it becomes functionally easier because the audience’s relationship is no longer with the artist, but with the experience the art represents.
Similarly, the recent case of singer-songwriter D4vd complicated the idea of separating art from the artist in a more immediate and material way. D4vd, legal name David Anthony Burke, is a 21-year-old viral alt-pop artist, who is currently in custody without bail after being charged with the first-degree murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Following the initial discovery of the body in September 2025, the remainder of D4vd’s “Withered” world tour was cancelled. His label, Darkroom/Interscope Records has suspended his promotion, and partnered brands such as Hollister and Crocs made steps to drop and distance themselves from him. A company that has been heavily under the public eye for their handling of the D4vd situation has been Epic Games and their flagship product, Fortnite. The situation has been particularly complex because D4vd’s career has been heavily tied and linked to the game, with his 2025 track “Locked & Loaded” being declared the official Fortnite anthem. But beginning late 2025, when the investigation first began public, Epic stopped featuring D4vd-related items in their item shop. Starting on April 28, Epic began offering a refund option for any player who purchased D4vd’s items in the past. However, rather than fully wiping the emote from the game, Epic moved the emote to the “See Confrontational Emotes” setting, meaning that by default players are unable to see or hear these emotes unless they turn the setting off. This has received a lot of criticism from players, who have raised concerns that D4vd will continue to receive royalties from these emotes and songs unless they are fully removed from the game. This highlights the difficulty and limits of separation in practice. The separation is not even entirely in the hands of the audience, but is sometimes constrained by the systems that keep the artist’s work visible, accessible and profitable.
But focusing only on cases like this can oversimplify the broader issue. Not every situation is as clear-cut, especially when you move away from major artists and look at smaller, or more transient figures in the industry.
There is also the question of time. If an artist was problematic in the past but has since changed, does that alter how we engage with their work? On the flip side, if someone’s harmful actions come to light after their work has already been widely embraced, does that retroactively change the meaning of that work? Even if someone chooses to only engage with an earlier “era” of an artist, that engagement can still translate into present-day support, whether financially or culturally. This makes any attempt at a clean cutoff feel somewhat arbitrary.
Ultimately, the difficulty of this debate comes from the fact that there is no single framework that applies to every situation. People engage with art differently depending on context, personal experience and the specific circumstances surrounding both the art and the artist. In some cases, the connection between the two is strong and unavoidable. In others, it becomes distant enough that the art feels independent, even if it technically isn’t.
Because of that, the question is not something that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” You cannot fully separate the art from the artist, but you also cannot treat every instance of engagement with art as a direct endorsement of its creator. The relationship between the two is constantly shifting, shaped by culture, time and individual perception, making a definitive answer unable to resolve each situation.
