His hometown and recent violence there is on the mind of Meek Mill these days and, through Twitter, he’s expressed both frustration and concern.
The rapper’s Twitter post included a news story about a 1-year-old boy, two teenagers and two women being shot at a party in North Philadelphia on Monday, March 30.
“The amount of animosity built up in my hood got the young bulls killing each other 200mph while a virus chasing their parents down to kill them too!” Mill tweeted on Tuesday. “Somebody gotta identify what happened to our mindframe in certain cities! The hate level too high for blacks.”
In a separate tweet, Mill called for people in certain neighborhoods to shift the way they do things. For example, he told those convicted of selling drugs they should move into the legal marijuana business instead of doing the same thing repeatedly.
“One day we gotta have the convo about the hood mindframe,” he wrote. “N#%gas being brainwashed to fail … simple as. If you went to jail 5 times for selling dope try weed or a job ‘switch it up.’ if you got shot on that corner twice ‘it’s ya life’ try a new area … at least try to win! I’m speaking on my city.. I just know we smarter than that!”
Mill’s tweets sparked plenty of reaction, with a lot of people suggesting how violence in certain neighborhoods can be diminished.
Plus, there was one person who put the responsibility of seeing less black-on-black violence on the shoulder of Mill and his industry peers.
“Meek I think it starts with all rappers agreeing to take the violence out of their lyrics ‘I gun you down, I got a Glock’ etc,” that person tweeted. “Rappers need to tone it down so we rap about stuff like Getting all As. That is how we can spread love and have most of us black people in high places.”
Another person said it’s not rappers’ responsibility to fix the violence problem, but that help should come from local government.
“They need the stuff we had back in the days,” one of Mill’s followers tweeted. “Summer programs and after school programs. City paid for. Also sports the city paid for. They played against each other. All those things need to be bought back. A lot of parents can volunteer to coach or help with the programs.”
Mills’ message about the “hate level being too high” among black people was re-tweeted over 1,000 times in the first few hours it was shared.
