Juelz Santana had a couple of conscious bars for his followers on Instagram on Thursday [July 7]. He kicked off the a-capella with the common protest chant of “no justice, no peace,” before channeling director Spike Lee with a couple of “Do The Right Thing” references befitting the moment. Santana, like scores of other artists, has apparently been moved to let his voice be heard in the wake of the recent Illinois and Minnesota police shootings.
“No justice, no peace/ I suggest we purge, release the beast/ no muzzle, no leash/ I’m thinking Spike Lee; If they ain’t going to do the right thing, then why the f*** should we?/ Look, they killed Eric Garner, no different than Radio Raheem/ They out here choking n****s till they can’t breathe/ This can’t be! We’ve got footage but it’s like they can’t see,” Juelz spits before coming off of the imagery with a call to mobilize. “What the f*** is going on here? I’ll tell you what’s going on here/ Black lives never mattered/ truth hurts, this s**t keeps happening and nothing ever happens/ we gotta take action.”
Santana is most famously known for laying his stripped-down rugged rhyme style on Dipset records, thus the content of the freestyle is a little something different from him. But there have been a good mix of rappers who’ve flexed a line or two of social awareness in their rhymes with the rise of Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce’s woke transformation. What’s more, the Black entertainment industry has seemed extra focused on such matters since Jesse Williams’ rousing speech before a standing audience at the BET Awards. The verse culminates with Jay-Z’s release of “Spiritual,” which he resurrected from when he originally wrote it after the shooting death of Mike Brown.
Source: instagram.com
