Matthew Sheffield writes, “If you’ve always thought her music was hackneyed and dull now you may have another reason to dislike Alicia Keys: she’s apparently a racist conspiracymonger”, as this AP report highlights (ellipses in Matthew’s post):
There’s another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: “‘Gangsta rap’ was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other.”[…]
Keys, 27, said she’s read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck “to symbolize strength, power and killing ’em dead,” according to an interview in the magazine’s May issue, on newsstands Tuesday.
Another of her theories: That the bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. was fueled “by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing.” […]
Though she’s known for her romantic tunes, she told Blender that she wants to write more political songs. If black leaders such as the late Black Panther Huey Newton “had the outlets our musicians have today, it’d be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself,” she said.
Matthew adds, “All this nonsense really should come as a surprise to Keys’s mother, Teresa Augello, who is white. Is this just a phase? In any case, it’s hard to see how a white entertainer or a religious-oriented entertainer making statements like this and it not doing significant harm to their career.”
She’s not alone of course; Keys’ remarks regarding her profession sound much like those expressed by Rev. Eric Lee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who featured prominently in several recent articles over on the main Pajamas site this past week, including this one:
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