Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys declared that there is a “destructive culture of police violence” in America while promoting her new song about a mother who gets a call from the coroner regarding her son who was “gunned down.”
The song’s title, A Perfect Way to Die, “doesn’t even make sense,” according to Keys, who suggests that she chose that phrase because it reminded her that life in America doesn’t make sense for minorities. “I have felt called by music like I never have before,” Keys said on social media. “I have been following its lead. It has led me to the song ‘A Perfect Way to Die.'”
“Of course, there is NO perfect way to die. That phrase doesn’t even make sense,” Keys continued. “Just like it doesn’t make sense that there are so many innocent lives that should not have been taken from us due to the destructive culture of police violence.”
“Sometimes I don’t have the words and music is the only thing that can speak,” she added. “I hope this speaks to you. I hope one day this song won’t be so relevant.”
The song, which dropped on Friday, which is “Juneteenth” — a holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S. — begins with a mother who gets a call from the coroner asking her to identify her son’s body, as he has been “gunned down” after a “simple walk to the corner store.”
“Simple walk to the corner store / Mama never thought she would be gettin’ a call from the coroner / Said her son’s been gunned down, been gunned down / ‘Can you come now?’ / Tears in her eyes, ‘Can you calm down? / Please, ma’am, can you calm down?'” read the song’s lyrics.
The song also suggests that there is a problem with not only police, but with the justice system in the United States, as the lyrics go on to mention “another broken promise they refuse to make right.”
“Another dream lost / Another king and queen lost / Another broken promise they refuse to make right / Oh, another night to live in fear / Oh, another night that you’re not here / Another reason to get out there and fight,” continue the song’s lyrics.
While the song has been released in the wake of the death of George Floyd, Keys noted in a recent interview with The Daily Show host Trevor Noah that she was actually inspired to write the song after the deaths of Michael Brown and Sandra Bland. Brown was an unarmed 18-year-old black man who was fatally shot in 2014 by a police officer after allegedly bum rushing and attempting to disarm the officer. Bland was a 28-year-old black woman who had hanged herself in her jail cell in 2015 after being arrested during a traffic stop.
“You hear these stories, and you hear their stories in these lyrics and the devastating thing is that it’s never not going to be relevant,” said Keys.
Watch below:
Keys continued by claiming that recent instances in the U.S. are actually “the most major pandemic” of them all. “And where we are right now, in the world and in this country, in America particularly, we are in a real, a real place that we can all see that this is the most major pandemic of all,” she said.
Keys went on to insist that people are being “murdered” in the United States simply for “being black.”
“This deeply rooted racism, this police brutality, this treatment of black people that is just completely unacceptable,” said Keys. “To the point where daily daily we are seeing lives lost, people murdered for… nothing, nothing. For being black.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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