Vic Mensa created a team made up of Wyclef Jean and Chance The Rapper to create his latest song, “Shelter.” The song was released yesterday with an accompanying music video.
Wyclef Jean’s raspy and strong vocals add much emotion and pain to the song. “When danger arrives, I’ll be by your side,” Jean sings emotionally in the chorus. Mensa and Chance The Rapper’s verses offer story-telling and conscious bars. Check out the song and video below:The track is an immense socially conscious tune that speaks on the state of racial injustice the world is in. The video shows Mensa walking down the street with dozens of black bodies with flowers on the ground. His verses on the tune offer incite about mass incarceration, wrongful incarceration and victims of police brutality.
The song’s release was also a fundraiser for Julius Jones, who is currently on death row for a murder in Oklahoma, although evidence suggests he did not commit the crime. “Julius was 19 years old at the University of Oklahoma pursuing a basketball scholarship when he was wrongly arrested and charged with first degree murder,” Mensa explains in the description of the video. “All donations to this fundraiser will go directly to his cause.”
In a press release, Mensa explained, “Shelter is a spiritual note, a healing frequency. It was inspired not by Hollywood or Paris, but by what’s going on on the ground—in the real world, with the real people.”
Mensa’s activism has not only been shown in his music, but he was also featured in a video titled “17 Ways Black People Are Killed In America” alongside other artists like Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige, Khalid and many others. The video was a video encouraging and motivating President Biden’s administration to create a racial justice initiative in his first 100 days of presidency.
Photo Credits: Mauricio Alvarado
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