No, they weren’t. More concerning is that it got so much fame and is such a wretched song.
That's funny. I guess Corey Irwin doesn't spend much time hangin with the Hip-Hop lifestyle.
Thirty seconds of internet research reveals that Corey Irwin (the "Ultimate Classic Rock Journalist," according to himself) is a gen-X-er from the Pacific Northwest and San Francisco.
Judging from his pictures, he can't have been born before the mid-80s, and so wasn't even alive during the "era in which racial epithets were thrown around freely," as he puts it.
He appears to be a millennial (LinkedIn had him in college 2001-2005), not that there aren’t genXers plenty capable of writing with that level of stupidity. I’d say he probably wasn’t yet born when John Lennon was killed.
Is he related to Irwin Corey?
You say he is a Gen Xer, but if he was born in the mid-80s he’s be a millenial.