Kurt Cobain said white people shouldn't rap, previously unheard interview reveals: 'We can't dance, we can't rap'

Nirvana frontman was interviewed by then-student Robert Lorusso in 1991 where he spoke about rap, success and the band's financial situation

A previously unheard interview with Kurt Cobain shows the Nirvana frontman expressing his belief that white people shouldn't rap.

During the conversation, which took place on 20 September 1991 at the Opera House in Toronto, Canada, Cobain discussed the band's tour, their album Nevermind, and also shut down rumours of their reported $1m record deal.

The audio recording was posted online by Roberto Lorusso, a musician and then-university student in Canada who conducted the interview for his student radio station (first spotted by Genius).

At one point he asks Cobain what he thinks about the activist music group Consolidated, whose white members often rapped.

Cobain responded: "I'm a fan of rap music, but most of it is so misogynist that I can't even deal with it. I'm not really that much of a fan, I totally respect and love it because it's one of the only original forms of music that's been introduced, but the white man doing rap is just like watching a white man dance. We can't dance, we can't rap."

Cobain had expressed similar views in an interview with Billboard that same year, commenting: "I think rap music is the only vital form of music that has been introduced to music in a long time since punk rock. I would never do rap music. No. There's just no sense in it. The people who do rap music do it just fine... I'm usually offended by people like Vanilla Ice, and stuff like that.

"The white man ripped off the black man long enough. They should leave rap music to the African-Americans because they do it so well and it is so vital to them."

Cobain's name and music have been a fixture in hip hop since his death in 1994, with the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" sampled and interpolated by artists including Jay-Z, Lupe Fiasco and Meyhem Lauren. Kanye West and Kid Kudi sampled Cobain's 'Burn the Rain" for their song "Cudi Montage".

Kendrick Lamar also rapped about the downside of fame with reference to Cobain on "HiiiPoWeR": "They play musical chairs once I'm on that pedestal / Frightening, so f***ing frightening / Enough to drive a man insane, a woman insane / The reason Lauryn Hill don't sing, or Kurt Cobain / Loaded that clip and then said 'bang', the drama it bring is crazy."

"This is a terrible interview," Lorusso admitted in a post about the conversation, titled "My embarrassing interview with Kurt Cobain". "I am not feigning self-deprecating modesty when I say this, this is objectively terrible by all journalistic standards. It is so for the following reasons: 1) My questions were poorly crafted because 2) My research was incomplete and inaccurate."

He said he had decided to release it because "it's still history" and because his friends "keep bugging me to post this trash fire. So here you go, jerks".

His "final take-away" from the interview was a "vague sense" that Cobain wasn't really enjoying the band's success. "I couldn't understand how he could have been so indifferent to it," he wrote. "A few years later it became very clear why. When I reflected on this experience, I realised that success doesn't mean a goddamn thing if your world is falling apart. Depression is a cruel thief that bankrupts your life with one fleeting moment of joy at a time. it still burns me out."