Black Rage by Lauryn Hill (2014)

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Black Rage

Black Rage is a song performed by American hip hop/R&B soul, Black Rage, released in 2014 as tributes to the incident Ferguson, Mo. [1] [2]

Lauryn Hill

Black Empowerment

Inspired by the incident in Ferguson, MO., several artists have released songs dedicating the fatal shooting of Michael Brown (18) and the aftermath. [3]

Lauryn Hill, then, released the song, titled Black Rage is dedicated to those who fight for racial equality in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2012, Hill had previously performed part of the lyrics, recited, as a poem in her Life Is Good/Black Rage tour with Nas. The singer, in a video captured on the Dallas date of the tour, said, “Obviously, this is a song about confrontation, right?”

“I use the performance platform as an opportunity to express the energy of that moment, and the intention behind it,” she said of the song at the time. “I’ve been a long-standing rebel against the stale, over-commoditization. As artists, we have an opportunity to help the public evolve, raise consciousness and awareness, teach, heal, enlighten and inspire in ways the democratic process may not be able to touch. So we keep it moving.” [4]

Hill also wrote on her Tumblr page talking about “reverse racism” in response to being sent to prison for tax evasion. [5]

The lyrics are much more serious than The Sound of Music's My Favorite Things. Here is the beginning of the song:

Black rage is founded on two-thirds a person

Rapings and beatings and suffering that worsens

Black human packages tied up with strings

Black rage can come from all these kinds of things

Black rage is founded on blatant denial

Squeezed economics, subsistence survival

Deafening silence and social control

Black rage is founded on wounds in the soul. [6]

Another part of the lyrics from Lauryn Hill's Black Rage (Sketch):

Black rage is founded on blocking the truth

Murder and crime, compromise and distortion [7]

References