Rap troll lil wayne has gone too far. The 30-year-old convicted gremlin drew angry reactions to his latest remix track by including a vulgar reference to Emmet till.
Till’s family expressed their disappointment in wayne’s lyrics — as did R&B legend Stevie Wonder.
“You can’t equate that to Emmett Till,” Wonder said. “You just cannot do that… I think you got to have someone around you that — even if they are the same age or older — is wiser to say, ‘Yo, that’s not happening. Don’t do that,'” said Wonder who was 5 when 14-year-old Till was tortured and killed by racists in Mississippi in the 1950s.
Wonder, 62, who considers Wayne a friend, was referencing a remix of rapper Future’s song “Karate Chop,” which “leaked” online over the weekend. On the track Lil wayne raps the line: “Beat that pu$$y up like Emmett Till.”
Till who was from Chicago, flirted with a white woman, while visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955. Later that night, the woman’s husband, along with a friend, drove out to the Till family shack and kidnapped the boy at gunpoint.
The men took Till to a barn where they beat him, gouged his eyes out, castrated him, shot him in the head, wrapped him in barbed wire and dumped his lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River.
Two men were tried for the murder of Till, but they were both acquitted by a jury of their peers in rural Mississippi. The two men later admitted their crimes in an interview for LIFE magazine, for which they were paid in cash.
Till’s death helped transform the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, refused to have a closed casket funeral for Emmet — so the world could see what racists did to her son.
Mamie spent the rest of her life keeping the memory of her son alive. “I cry everyday. But I cry as I move,” said Mamie Till-Mobley, who died of cancer in 2003.
Epic Records president L.A. Reid apologized to the Till family for Wayne’s offensive lyrics, and Epic Records, Future’s label, sent cease & desist notices to websites and blogs that posted the track.
Till’s family has asked Wayne for an apology, and Epic Records execs said the official song will not feature the offensive lyrics.
Wayne, real name Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., has not offered an apology.
