One day after speaking out on the “monster” America has created in his online treatise about Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, T.I. delivers the revolutionary new song, “New National Anthem.”
On the Skylar Grey-assisted track, the “No Mediocre” MC dives headfirst into socially conscious lyrics centered on racism and injustice.
“I know radio prolly aint gonna play this….but chopper going off in the hood man like Afghanistan or the Gaza strip somewhere man/Yeah, we here it so much we probably numb to it by now/After all, it’s the American way right?” he raps on the song’s intro.
The uptempo beat keeps military time while the Atlanta rapper waxes poetic about prison, crooked cops and other maladies affecting the black community.
“What the f–k you know about being a black man in America?” he asks.
What stands out, though, is the “Coming Home” chanteuse’s chorus, which is punctuated by Tip’s timely proclamations.
Home of the brave and free (It’s America)
Free just to murder me (land of the handgun)
Land of the beautiful (home of the shotgun)
Cursed by the hate we throw (You’re dead if you ain’t got one)
Is this the new national anthem (It was like this before I got here baby, I ain’t do it)
Is this the new national anthem (I ain’t start it, I’m just a part of it)