- Tony Lanez just released new music.
- He did it two months after Megan Thee Stallion’s shooting, with which he was involved.
- He also did it one day after the Breonna Taylor announcement, which makes what he did even more despicable.
I will not listen to Tory Lanez.
I absolutely refuse.
Some say I should—after all, my hip-hop credentials speak for themselves, and as a good critic of the genre, I should know what I’m talking about—but some things are bigger than hip-hop.
Some things are about morality—about standing with Black women, especially when they need it most—and about refusing to feed the machine that rewards abusers for their despicable behavior.
Tory Lanez Had Plenty of Time to Address This Properly
The minute Tory Lanez was named in the Megan Thee Stallion shooting incident, he should have addressed it.
As a reminder, on July 12, 2020, Megan Thee Stallion was shot in both of her feet while in the Hollywood Hills. Though she confirmed the shooting on July 27, she didn’t name Lanez as her attacker. It took until August 20 for Megan to finally acknowledge Lanez’s role in the shooting, in a tearful video:
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Despite admitting that Tory Lanez shot her on that fateful night, Megan still tried to protect him, because she said she knew what the cops on the scene had the potential to do to him, as a Black man in Trump’s America:
You shot me. and you got your publicist and your people going to these blogs, lying and s—…stop lying. Even though he shot me, I tried to spare him [at the time]…I go through so much s— on a daily basis anyways. [Tory’s] not in jail because I didn’t tell the [police] what happened, and I should have. I’m smart. I didn’t have to spare [Tory]. But I did. And I’m done.
While Lanez wasn’t arrested for shooting Megan Thee Stallion, he was arrested at the scene for allegedly carrying a concealed weapon.
So after two months of silence, without so much as an apology to his now-ex-friend, what’s his response?
A mixtape. A damned mixtape.
Are you serious, sir?
And He Picked the Day After the Breonna Taylor Announcement to Do This
On the same day that Tory Lanez decided to release a mixtape in which he addresses the Megan Thee Stallion issue—and on a song in which he all but blames her for the shooting while alleging that she didn’t get hurt that badly— the Breonna Taylor announcement came down from the Kentucky Attorney General.
In case you’re unaware—and really, how can you be?—protests in the streets continue over this miscarriage of justice.
And Black people—Black women, especially—are in pain over this.
To those defending Tory Lanez, who believe he’s some martyr for an unjust and racist system, I say the following: Yes, there is a huge disparity in how the American justice system treats a white man versus a Black man, and one would be foolish to suggest otherwise. But to suggest that Lanez is being wrongly accused because he’s a Black man is equally ludicrous.
He waited until the day after the Breonna Taylor announcement to generate the maximum amount of controversy, while subsequently spitting in the face of both Taylor’s memory and every other Black woman—his predominant supporters—with his attention-seeking ways.
He addressed the issue not in the form of a statement through a lawyer, like every other accused celebrity man with means would do, but through a mixtape in which he insults his victim and every other woman that supported her through the ordeal.
Lanez made sure to blame his victim—a Black woman—for the bullets that riddled her body as protests rage in the streets over a Black woman who was a victim of police brutality, who died unjustly as five shots riddled her body.
No, Tory Lanez, I will not listen to your mixtape because I listen to Black women. I support Black women. I believe Black women. And I believe Black lives—all Black lives—matter.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.