As previously reported by REVOLT, Jason Aldean is under fire over his latest single, “Try That In A Small Town,” and its accompanying video, which featured a lot of imagery that many deemed as racist. Notably, it projected footage from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests onto Columbia, Tennessee’s Maury County Courthouse, where a Black teen named Henry Choate was lynched in the 1920s — all as the Georgia artist sang about what he would do if unnamed individuals were to “cross that line.” That building was also the site of the infamous Columbia Race Riot two decades later.

“Got a gun that my granddad gave me, they say one day they’re gonna round up, well, that s**t might fly in the city, good luck, try that in a small town, see how far ya make it down the road,” Aldean said in the clip, which has since been pulled from CMT‘s regular rotation.

Today (July 26), The Washington Post reported that the aforementioned video had been updated with the protests removed, making it six seconds shorter than its original release. Other clips of violence and criminal acts taking place in major metropolitan areas remain. Said report does not confirm when the video was edited.

On July 18, Aldean responded to the growing backlash by claiming his song isn’t connected to race at all. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it, and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage,” he stated in a Twitter post (below). “And while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music, this one goes too far.”

He continued, “My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy… But the desire for it to, that’s what this song is about.”