Hip-hop has always by nature been a genre that invokes political discourse, raising current issues and exploring them from a first-person point of view. It's only in recent years that some mainstream hip-hop has taken a more superficial turn. When Kendrick Lamar performed his new single "Alright" at the BET Awards on top of a vandalized police car, it was bound to set tongues wagging. But while most people applauded his energy, Fox News were so offended that they accused him of sending "exactly the wrong message." Host Geraldo Rivera claimed:
This is exactly the wrong message. And then to conflate what happened in the church in Charleston, South Carolina with these tragic incidents involving excessive use of force by cops is to equate that racist killer with these cops, it is so wrong, it is so counterproductive, it gives exactly the wrong the message.[...] It doesn’t recognize that a city like Baltimore, where — remember Freddie Gray — they’ve had a homicide a day since Freddie Gray, no one’s protesting that. Baltimore, a tiny city, 7% the size of New York, has just as many murders as New York. You know, we’ve got to wake up at a certain point and understand what’s going on here.
Considering the current political climate, perhaps it's necessary for musicians in the mainstream spotlight to speak out. What do you think? Check out the rhetoric-filled clip below and watch the impressive video for "Alright," which continues in the same vein as his live performance of it.