The past few days have given us extraordinarily heavy hearts, fueling a level of anger that's been pushed beyond its boiling point. Enough is enough. Seeing my black brothers and sisters killed in the street, then demonized for irrelevant to nonsensical things to ultimately push the narrative of their villainy to prove they deserved to die warrants a call for punitive measures against these officers. Someone needs to check these white journalists that point fingers to the murdered instead of at the murderers as well. Pac said it best, "cops give a damn about a negro/ pull the trigga kill a nigga he's a hero." Those words still ring true right up to this very moment. Like Malcolm X, Tupac Shakur sounds like he's speaking to us right now. So thank God for them.
And thank God for rap. It's always here to reflect its people and share the truth of the turmoil we're going through in our communities. Which brings me to SDotBraddy's timely new cut Our Lives ft. Yoshi Thompkins (prod. by Ronny J). This track is needed. Ronny J's beat rightfully has an atmosphere of gloom. Our Lives' opening choir-sounding vocals have an angelic ascension in the harmonizing that in my opinion speaks to the black lives that have already been cut down by the hands of the crooked. Ronny's ballerina music box chimes has a eerie sound that feels like eyes burning holes through your neck. That part of the beat takes on the anticipation of the system waiting for a black man to slip up. Then Ronny J's drums nuke in with elbowing kicks and doubled drums with heartbroken soundbites of Eric Garner pleading to police he can't breath. The power of what I heard in the instrumental give the bars all the gumption to spit the ugly truth of an encounter with police for a black man in this country.
SDotBraddy rightfully hits the ballistic button on Our Lives. SDot's opening line "where the f**k is my 40 acres at and my mule?" That line, with the built-up frustration fueling it, sets the entire song up. We want answers -- why aren't we given a chance to live? Why is a black man feared and seen as nothing more than a thug with a gun, but when a white man has a gun it's his second amendment right? Why are black people wrong for not wanting to be killed during what should be a routine police encounter? And most importantly, how do cops continue to get away with killing us? SDotBraddy raps all those questions and raises that pain from frustration and truth to the surface. In my opinion his flow sounded like holding back tears talk. Especially in that radiating truth hook. It sounds real and vulnerable. The words offered perspective and a reason to be upset as Yoshi Thompkins spits to supply the answers in a voice of realization.
Yoshi Thompkins throughout Our Lives sounds proud. He's proud of the melanin in his skin, yet scared he'll be killed because of it. His raps remind us that we're kings and queens. Yoshi's verse lives with a sense of urgency for solutions because something needs to be done. Now. These are truthful bars and are exactly what I needed to hear. The final sampled clip of a police encounter ending in shots worries me, though. The inflection in the cop's voice sounds scared and unsure. Someone who is scared, unsure, has a gun and a badge of power and protection to hide behind frightens me. It warrants me to ask the question: Am I next? All because someone is scared of me due to a narrative pushed around about my people as old as Methuselah that we're violent, that we're subhuman. But when you look around, we're the one's dead in the street at the hands of the police. That is our harsh reality every day. And it has become more than tiresome. Our lives do matter. As comfort, I look to music to make this entire situation feel much less lonely and hopeless. I find the slices of tranquility in this music so refreshing, so revitalizing. I hope you all do, too.
Listen to Our Lives below.
Lead Photo Cred: soundcloud.com
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