Do you remember Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the BET awards? Not everybody was happy with it, especially Fox News correspondent, Geraldo Rivera who said he was trying to promote violence and racism towards black Americans. Rivera and other news anchors took to Fox News’ The Five segment a few days ago to discuss Lamar’s powerful performance of “Alright” at the 2015 BET Awards. which apparently was not impressive to them, according to Billboard!
“This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years. This is exactly the wrong message,” Rivera said when touching on this “Alright” line: “And we hate po-po/ Wanna kill us dead in the street, fo sho.”
Lamar has now responded to this accusation in an interview with TMZ stating that the performance was about giving hope to black Americans who have been indiscriminately gunned down by police men as opposed to the opinion of Rivera. Lamar laments:
“How can you take a song that’s about hope and turn it into hatred? The overall message is ‘We gonna be alright.’ It’s not the message of ‘I wanna kill people’”.
For him, the killing of young black boys is the problem that should be faced not criticism of Hip-hop music. He says he will continue to talk about it and give hope to the people!
Watch Kendrick Lamar’s BET performance:
Photo Credit: Christopher Polk/BET/Getty Images for BET, Jason Merritt/Getty Images