(ThyBlackMan.com) The family of the late Emmett Till is entirely fed up with corporations who provide sponsorship to rappers seeking to desecrate the memory of civil rights figures, as well as contribute to the destruction of the black community. After an offensive lyric written by the artist Lil Wayne, the Till family has been on the attack, demanding that the rapper apologize. The lyric was one in which Lil Wayne compared Emmett Till’s destroyed face to a woman’s v@gina after he’d finished having s*x with her.
Another rapper, Vigalantee out of Kansas City, Kansas, also wrote a song demanding that Lil Wayne apologize for his choice of words. He and other artists are speaking up against the blatant disrespect from a man who spits on the memory of one black teenager while teaching millions more how to become drug addicts.
The song “Karate Chop” has since been pulled from the radio. But all the while, Wayne continues to refuse to apologize. Another rapper on the song,
Future, gave a very convoluted response to the controversy, and didn’t even seem to understand what was going on. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if Future even knows who Emmett Till is.
The family is planning to replicate the energy from the UltraViolet movement, which pushed Rick Ross out of his deal with Reebok. Ross was under fire for writing a verse to the song “U.O.E.N.O.” that references drugging a woman so that he could sleep with her without her permission.
Sadly enough, African Americans are probably the only group in America that can be consistently disrespected by our own artists without there being any consequences. The move to undermine Rick Ross was driven mostly by white feminists, but it’s odd that black women have been getting called b*tches and hoes by rappers for the last 20 years. Even worse is that many of our daughters have been trained to dance to the songs that speak about them as if they are nothing more than four-legged animals.
Perhaps this is the time for us to examine our music and what it does to the minds of our youth. We can continue to love hip-hop without allowing it to become a tool used by corporate America to destroy the minds of young people. As Minister Louis Farrakhan said during a recent interview with YBW’s Jason Parker, hip-hop was once the voice of revolution. Now, the power of that weapon has been shifted and co-opted, like a gun being turned against its owner. The thing that was once being used to free our minds is now being used to enslave us.
I’ve spoken extensively with Airickca Gordon-Taylor, who is spearheading the initiative, and I agree with her cause. If Lil Wayne wants to make this go away, he only needs to do the right thing and apologize. Mountain Dew should take notice that there is a new paradigm in black America, and it’s one that involves empowerment.
Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.