The MCM leaders emphasized repeatedly that their aim had been to help Bowe and to treat him as a brother in Christ. “We love Dante,” said Gaines. “He’s our brother. And I want to make that clear, like, not previously—today, like right now, we’re in relationship with him, we love him.”
In 2022 Maverick City Music published a statement saying that it had “put a pause on our professional relationship” with Bowe because of “behavior that is inconsistent with our core values and beliefs.”
MCM did not at the time give the specific reason for that decision, and speculation swirled that it was because of a video Bowe had made of himself singing along to a song by Bad Bunny. Bowe had also generated controversy earlier that year when he said on the red carpet of the Grammy Awards that he looked forward to seeing Lil Nas X perform.
After MCM issued its statement about Bowe, Bowe published an apology on social media without specifying what he had done to lead to the “pause.” Soon after Maverick City made its announcement about Bowe, polemical news site Protestia reported that the artist had posted a full frontal nude image of himself to his Instagram story.
In a radio segment in August 2023, Bowe acknowledged he had posted the nude photo of himself but said posting it was an accident and that while it was “inappropriate,” it was not “sexual.” He also said that the photo was not the reason why MCM parted ways with him; the real reason, according to Bowe, was his success as a solo artist.
Ruslan mentioned that, prior to MCM releasing its statement, he publicly defended Bowe during the controversy over the Bad Bunny video. “Long story short,” said Ruslan, “as I’m defending Dante,” MCM’s statement came out.
Ruslan went on to ask Gaines, Jay and Gyamfi for the real reason why MCM paused the relationship, saying he did not believe it was because of the Bad Bunny video but understood it had something to do with “something inappropriate posted to his Instagram story.” The influencer said he thought Bowe might have been high when he posted it.
“Dante has addressed this himself, so there is no conjecture here. He’s admitted to the inappropriate photo on multiple platforms,” said Gyamfi. “So we didn’t want to be the people to put that out because, as we stated over and over, we saw him as family, right?”
“And this wasn’t an attempt by us to throw him under the bus,” Gyamfi added. “It wasn’t an attempt by us to even really distance ourselves from him.”
“I think some background that will help a lot of people is that we wrote the statement in conjunction with Dante,” Gyamfi continued. “He was fully aware.”
