A “Message to Macklemore” by Ferguson Rapper Tef Poe

The hardest hitting song of the year on “race in America” and White privilege was not penned by Macklemore, nor is it a “controversial” video by Beyoncé. It’s this scathing critique of White supremacy by St. Louis rapper and activist, Tef Poe. The song titled “Message to Macklemore”, is a response to Macklemore’s “White Privilege 2″ and is set to the instrumental of the Seattle rapper’s song, “Wings”. Poe pronounces from jump that he’s “broadcasting live from the southside of St. Louis,” and from there on out he pulls no punches, going hard lyrically and calling out everyone from Barack Obama, to Stephen Colbert, CNN, Viacom, Stacey Dash, and many more.

Poe, who’s real name is Kareem Jackson, first came onto the national scene in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson in August 2014. I first began following him back then on Twitter as he was one of the main voices documenting what was going on in the streets. After the “unrest” in Ferguson, PBS held a Town Hall called “America After Ferguson,” in which Poe sat next to Missouri Governor Claire McCaskill and explained why he had no faith in law enforcement or the justice system in America.

He famously said, “I voted for Barack Obama twice, and still got tear gassed.”

But this new release from Poe is not a Macklemore diss song.

He raps “my letter to Macklemore, I made mine after yours/ Cuz my opinion only holds validity, after yours.”

And with that one line, Poe addresses the weight of White privilege on his music and goes on to tell Macklemore that he appreciates his effort to address systemic racism, but that “Dead Prez did the same thing and they got black-balled.”

Later in the track, he continues the conversation of Ferguson, citing that his father was prejudicially targeted for traffic violations by local police, something that was determined by the US Justice Department to be racially motivated in the wake of the non-indictment of Darren Wilson. Of course, this racial targeting had long been a well-known practice to Black residents in that region of St. Louis county, but had fallen on deaf ears with local politicians. Without the efforts of Poe and other activists and community members on the ground in Fergsuon, none of these hard truths would have ever seen the light of day.

But as punishing as Poe is with his delivery on this brutally honest freestyle track, upon closer inspection, he’s also sending out a very heart-felt plea – to not only Macklemore, but to sympathetic White Americans in general – to pay attention to the daily pain and suffering of his people. Indeed, this bluntly wrapped dialogue may be hard for many Americans to swallow, but it’s one of the most important conversations of the 21st century. As MLK once said, “a riot is the voice of the unheard.” An unhinged reaction to extreme levels of injustice. Tef Poe captures that in lyrical form.

“So this is not an option out of desperation/
Imagine if they deemed y’all the lowest of the races/
And Black and White neo-Liberals control the conversation/
And these reform policies don’t offer us solutions/
We don’t want apologies we want a revolution/
A better man even if I’m in the ambulance/
Iggy Azalea don’t give a fuck about Sandra Bland/
Let alone Detroit, Baltimore, or Pakistan”