Screen shot 2018 07 20 at 11 39 40 am
Source: Youtube screenshot
Black Thought just released a new visual, "Rest In Power" paying homage to the slain Florida teen, Trayvon Martin.
The song and video comes in tandem with Jay-Z and Paramount Network’s forthcoming docu-series, Rest In Power: The Trayvon Martin Story on the life and death of the then 17-year-old, gun violence and racial discrimination in America, and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Martin was murdered in Florida by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012. Zimmerman was later found not guilty of second-degree murder.
“I wanted to write something that somehow addressed a broader issue and addressed American tradition,” Black Thought told VIBE, “and how for so many generations this same sort of thing has been taking place... It reintroduces the information to those of us who were already following the case and were already informed, but it also reintroduces it to a new demographic who just totally didn’t know,” he added. “This was 2012, thousands of years in the past with regards to the way we receive information now.”
WATCH: Watch Black Thought Kick a Freestyle Recapping the 'Jurassic Park' Movies
The music video, directed by Rohan Blair-Mangat—who also directed the video for Jay-Zs “BAM”— was shot inside NYC’s Gotham Hall.
In the song, Black Thought calls out America's long history of anti-black violence:
"For every Trayvon Martin there was an Emmett Till.
How many more kids will we wait for them to kill?
My tears collecting like raindrops on a window sill.
If the wounds heal the memories never fade."
Watch “Rest in Power” below:
