It has been over two months since the death of George Floyd, which sparked intense conversations about race and law enforcement in the US and worldwide. A lot of musicians made some art in response to everything going on, one of them being Anderson .Paak. He dropped a new song called “Lockdown,” and now he’s doing his best to keep the conversation going with a new remix of the song, which features JID, Noname, and Jay Rock.
JID comes in after .Paak’s intro, saying in his verse, “Have you had your coffee this evening, Karen? / ‘Cause you seem a little off / All the Black girls missin’ and endin’ up inside the coffins / But you mad when they ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ on front your sidewalks.”
Noname comes next, rapping, “Uh, maybe this round two / Government cinematic, American drive-through / Eat their apple pie in the mornin’ and bury the strange fruit / Then marry the strange fruit and call it the Black love.” She goes on to address the death of Trayvon Martin, saying, “We seen ’em murder the indigenous, the passage middle / The Constitution, a life for a bag of Skittles?”
Jay Rock arrives on the track third, and his verse features lyrics like, “Turn on your tube, dawg, look how they do us / Knee on our necks, bullets in backs / Stimulus checks strictly for blacks?”
Listen to the “Lockdown” remix above.