Photo: WENN
Kendrick Lamar has responded to FOX News' assertion that "hip hop has done more damage to African Americans than racism", saying: "Hip hop is not the problem. Our reality is the problem."
The rapper performed 'Alright' at the Black Entertainment Television Awards this week - and his performance saw him stand on a police car rapping the line, "We hate the po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure."
Watch Kendrick Lamar perform 'Alright' at the BET Awards below
He continued, "This is exactly the wrong message. And then to conflate what happened in the church in South Carolina with these tragic incidents involving excessive use of force by cops, is to equate that racist killer with these cops.
"It is so wrong, it is so counter-productive, it gives exactly the wrong message, it doesn't recognise that a city like Baltimore - remember Freddie Gray - they've had a homicide a day since Freddie Gray, no-one's protesting that. Baltimore, a tiny city 7% the size of New York has just as many murders as New York. We've got to wake up at a certain point."
Now, speaking to TMZ Live, Kendrick Lamar has responded to Rivera's comments. "How can you take a song that's about hope and turn it into hatred?" he said. "The overall message is 'We gonna be alright'. It's not that I wanna kill people. The problem isn't me standing on a cop car - I think his attempt is really deluding the real problem, which is the senseless act of killing these young boys out here."
He continued, "For the most, it's avoiding the truth. This is reality, this is my world, this is what I talk about in my music. You can't delude that. Me being on a cop car, that's a performance piece after these senseless acts."
Watch Kendrick Lamar respond to Geraldo Rivera below
He continued, "Yeah we angry about what's going on, yeah we see what's going on, but you can't take away our hope that things will be OK at the end of the day... Hip-hop is not the problem. Our reality is the problem of the situation. This is our music.
"This is us expressing ourselves. Rather [than] going out here and doing the murders myself, I want to express myself in a positive light the same way other artists are doing. Not going out in the streets, go in the booth and talking about the situation and hoping these kids can find some type of influence on it in a positive manner. Coming from these streets and coming from these neighborhoods, we’re taking our talents and putting ‘em inside the studio."
Lamar concluded, "He's avoiding the problem - us being in a mentality where we have to somewhat survive in these hostile situations, that's the real problem - and the more and more he tries to avoid that, the more and more we're gonna keep talking about it. "
Kendrick Lamar's third album, To Pimp A Butterfly, was released earlier this year to critical acclaim.
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