Shawn Mendes Apologizes for Old Racially Insensitive Posts

Pop Prince Shawn Mendes, 21, has faced backlash after followers dug up old racially insensitive posts made by the singer before he was famous -- and now he has responded.

Earlier this week during a tour Q&A session, a devoted African American fan was eager to find an answer, "We just kind of want to know because we get a lot of hate for supporting you, knowing that this is your past."

"This is kind of a hard question. I don't want you to take an offense to it at all. I just kind of wanted to do it for black Twitter, black Shawn stans everywhere out there. Um, in the past there is a lot of kind of ignorant tweets I guess I could say," the fan continued. "Why has it never been acknowledged? Or why has there never been anything about it?"

The "Senorita" singer stayed calm as he responded, "Yeah of course. A lot of things just need to be moved on from, but I also think that the things that [you] saw, like I had friends when I was 14 who would like take my phone and post things of them because they thought it was funny that I had like 2,000 followers and it was this big thing, and they'd post photos of themselves and at the time I was just like not thinking about it."

"I had no idea I was going to have 50 million followers, which doesn't make it any better," the popstar continued. "But um, yeah totally I apologize for everything insensitive I said in the past, but with that being said yeah I think that's not my personality."

Mendes has been learning the ropes of stardom since he popped into the music scene in 2013 after he posted videos of him doing song covers on the video-sharing application Vine.

The fan concluded her question, "Also, I have a black lives matter flag that I might throw on stage so please catch it."

Mendes shouted back, "Throw that at me!"