Pusha T Won't Be Silent On America's Darkness On His New Song 'Sunshine'
The themes of drug dealing and inner city violence that often occupy Pusha T's music are, at their core, spotlighting social issues and divisions within the country: His friends in jail, the violence in his native Virginia Beach and the circumstances under which its residents fall into the drug trade are born out of a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and housing discrimination.
But he rarely attacks issues of racism inequality with the directness that he does on his new track, "Sunshine." And it's a powerful move.
The song, which will be featured on Push's album, King Push -- Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude, premiered on "The Daily Show" Tuesday night, and is a fitting drop for the end of 2015, as it addresses some of the year's most prominent and contentious issues.
"America, you need a miracle/ Beyond spiritual/ I need a realer view/ I hold a mirror to it/ These ain’t new problems, they just old ways," he raps to open the song, which features Jill Scott, before closing the first verse by highlighting police brutality: "Still a target, but the badge is the new noose/ Yeah, we all see it, but cellphones ain’t enough proof/ So we still lose."
It's simple, impactful language that's chilling as Push delivers his lyrical sermon.
From there, the newly appointed G.O.O.D. Music President addressed education inequality, the prison industrial complex and plenty more. He ended the performance with a Black Power salute.
“Rap, to me, is about addressing everything that y’all are hearing, what’s going on right here, right now, and everything that’s going on in society," Push told MTV News earlier this month. "I’m talking about Donald Trump, his perspective and his views that I’m really not with. I’m talking about police brutality. I’m addressing so many things, man.
“I just feel like the situations in the past year, it’d be an injustice not to speak on them,” he said. “These are my people. Young, black kids are being killed. It’s really a sensitive thing with me, super sensitive. It would be an injustice not to speak on it, man. When I think of my favorite rap artists, I think of Public Enemy and groups like that. There was an angst and an aggressive energy around that. Now, I watch these situations happen and young people seem a bit more passive. I wanted to go polar opposite from that and take an aggressive stance lyrically through it and show people how I think, how my mind works.”
