YouTuber, rapper and boxer Olajide Olayinka Williams Olatunji, better known by his stage name KSI, has extended his apologies for using a racial slur.

Variety reported he also announced he would take a social media break to reflect.

KSI, who co-founded the YouTube group the Sidemen, appeared in a video inspired by the British game show Countdown on Sunday. The show has participants choose between two piles of lettered tiles with vowels and consonants. Contestants then have 30 seconds to form the longest word with nine letters.

KSI created the word “p**i,” a derogatory slur against people of South Asian descent.

“I don’t mean this maliciously, but the word’s p**i,” he said in the clip.

The video censored the word, and the rest of the Sidemen seemed to find the incident funny.

The clip didn’t take long to go viral on social media, and it sparked outrage.

“Nah @ksi you’re not funny man you cannot say “P*ki” in any context These lot will do anything for content,” one viewer wrote on Twitter. 

“Honestly the content they’ve got now is just rotten, a few weeks back with KSI pissing on Ethan’s hands was vile & today is just peak, lost all respect, if these are the lengths they go to for content then they shouldn’t be doing this anymore,” another added.

Guz Khan, recently nominated for a BAFTA for his work in Man Like Mobeen, was particularly disturbed by the incident. He shared several tweets about KSI’s use of the slur.

“You see @KSI the issue you have here is that a lot of Pakistanis can make things very difficult for you and anyone giggling in this video,” he wrote. “When they catch up with you, I hope the dead countdown joke was worth it… Wakey Wines was getting his compensation in advance.” 

 

The video has been removed from the Sidemen’s YouTube channel, and KSI apologized for it on Twitter.

“I wanna apologise for saying a racial slur in a recent Sidemen video. There’s no excuse, no matter the circumstances, I shouldn’t have said it and I’m sorry,” he tweeted. “I’ve always said to my audience that they shouldn’t worship me or put me on a pedestal because I’m human. Im not perfect, I’m gonna mess up in life, and lately I’ve been messing up a lot. So I’ve decided I’m gonna just take a break from social media for a while.”

Sky News reported this isn’t KSI’s first use of inappropriate language. In 2021, he used a trans slur. At the time, he explained away his behavior, saying he “didn’t even know that t****y was a bad word.”

Racial Slur