Google "police kill unarmed black man" and it garners about 3,560,000 results in 0.38 seconds. This is an issue that further divides America. Police are more or less one of the top three most trusted professions in the country. There are those who trust the police force unquestionably and unconditionally, that tend to err in the thought process that these unarmed citizens must have something to earn their deaths, and there are those who recognize the science racial bias and prejudiced rooted in science. What was once bubbling under the surface in America is beginning to boil over. We've reached a tipping point, and Dallas rapper Bobby Sessions is ready to confront that fact head on.
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Sessions reached a tipping point himself after seeing a video of a former classmate of his, activist and former University of North Texas Student Government Association Vice President Mercedes Fulbright, being detained in a rough manner by the Dallas Police Department while peacefully protesting. She was staging a "die-in" which is basically laying on the ground. The incident occurred on December 5 of last year. The very next day, Sessions wrote "Black America," a stream-of-conscious protest song about police brutality.
What's unique about the song is that it fosters a rambunctious attitude, as opposed to other songs of its same ilk, which may be thoughtful but tend to be too much like listening to Ben Stein explain quantum physics.
"The listener doesn't wanna be bored," Sessions says. "When people typically go about making songs like this, these social awareness kind of songs, it's like elevator music. It's a very dry kind of song that's got great content, great substance, great messages but the user has to be entertained. You have to make it entertaining and empowering. Music is entertainment."
"Black America," as a protest record and it matches the intensity and urgency of a protest itself. It's aggressive and emotional, but as Sessions stresses, it isn't a call for violence. He decided to release the song on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a nod to the civil rights activist's legacy.
"He was so powerful with his approach to non-violence. He was so powerful that when he spoke you saw his energy and his aura," he says, "I want to mimic that aura. I want to create that aura for myself."
Sessions' solution to the widespread injustice is for people to know their worth; you don't necessarily hear about doctors and lawyers getting killed in the street, he says, because they know their worth. "The people they call thugs are some of the most brilliant people on Earth," he declares. "They just don't know their worth."
Listen to the track, produced by Tone Jonez, above.
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