Just as Rick Ross somehow managed to recover from his controversial date rape lyrics, the hip-hop star defiled the name of slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin in his latest track, “Black and White.”
The rapper then released a public statement to explain the lyrics but only made matters worse when he brought another Florida teen who was gunned down, Jordan Davis, into the mix.
It isn’t clear who is in the studio with Ross when he is making his music, but somehow a very troubling lyric made its way onto his Mastermind album.
In the song titled “Black and White,” Ross raps, “Too close to a n**** as motherf***** bomb, Trayvon Martin, I’m never missing my target…”
To no surprise the Twitterverse exploded and immediately slammed Ross for the disrespectful lyric.
“Every time Rick Ross opens his mouth, I lose respect for him,” one user tweeted before quoting the controversial line.
Another user called the lyric “ignorance at its finest.”
Other users were so furious they didn’t want to hear another word from the rapper.
“I’m OVER this u disrespectful b***,” one user tweeted before following up with a tweet that explained their frustration. “Rick Ross is a disgrace an embarrassment. Stp making trash n calling it music.”
It wasn’t long before Ross tried to explain himself, but what he hoped would dig him out of an awfully deep hole just turned out to be a terrible case of deja vu.
The same way he failed miserably to explain his lyrics on “U.O.E.N.O,” he somehow failed even more miserably this time around.
“It’s so important that today, on the two-year anniversary of the death of Trayvon Martin, we never forget that tragedy,” Ross said. “I’m never going to let the world forget that name. In my song ‘Black and White’ off Mastermind I say, ‘Trayvon Martin, I’m never missing my target.’ There I’m reminding people that if you’re a Black person or a person of any color for that matter in this country, you have to be accurate, whatever moves you make, stay accurate.”
He then makes yet another reference to Martin and even refers to Jordan Davis, who was gunned down by Michael Dunn for playing loud music.
“Even when you’re walking down the street, playing music from your car, you have to stay on point,” he said.
He went on to comment about all the violence against Black men that has taken place lately, but never addressed all the violence that is often depicted and promoted in his own music.
In the very same song as the controversial Trayvon Martin lyric, Ross also raps, “Bang – your window shattered like it never mattered/ Your moving weight, your pockets getting fatter… See mass of blood n*** want a brick/ My money funny, but you gotta love it.”
Unfortunately, this is nowhere near the first time a prominent Black figure’s name or image was used in a disrespectful manner in the hip-hop industry.
Lil Wayne released a controversial lyric about Emmett Till on Future’s “Karate Chop” remix and Nicki Minaj recently faced backlash for her use of Malcolm X’s image on her cover art for “Lookin’ Ass N***.”
Rick Ross’s album Mastermind releases in a matter of days- March 4 – so only time will tell if the disrespectful lyric will be enough to tarnish his album sales.
