Man, We Livin’ in a Warzone: Part 1

           In September of this year, 2016, T.I. a well-known rapper from Atlanta released one of the boldest music videos of this decade, Warzone. Now, for the last few years T.I. had given up speaking truth in his lyrics for the easier and higher paying route, which as you can guess lost him a lot of true hip-hop/gangster rap fans. He went as far as to have other lyricists write his lyrics then claimed them as his own. So, you can say and believe what you want about T.I. but this video alone completely switched my view on his message.

            Warzone is a brilliantly written rap about martyr’s, police brutality, and the United States warped sense of equality, even beyond race. To provide an example this is roughly one fourth of the first verse, “I'll be a martyr if my great grandaughter benefit, They pull you over, ask you where your license at, Be careful reachin' for it, you know you can die for that, And this ain't nothin' new, just got cameras so you can see the shit, Got Dr. King and Abe Lincoln askin' where the freedom at, This ain't no equality, Man you ain't have no justice on your mind when you shot at me, But fuck it, this the way it gotta be, Hey listen, you won't shoot at them then shoot at me? Boy you are not a G” Not only does this segment, convey the overall message but it also includes references to real life incidents. To be specific the second line, “they pull you over ask you where your license at…” is a reference to the famous Philando Castile inccedent where a white cop shot Philando seven times, while he was sitting in his car simply pulling his license out of his wallet. So the source material is well collected and really hits home, the only thing is a lot of people have a hard time understanding T.I. when he raps, since his has an interesting mumbly rap style. Which is where his music video comes into play. 

Stay tuned for part two…