The Black Aesthetic: Guns & Execution in TI’s Us or Else

As an impassioned advocate of the Black Lives Matter movement and hip-hop’s resistance to Trump, Tip “T.I.” Harris is a socially conscious rapper who’s unafraid to march and protest. In his latest album Us or Else: Letter to the System, T.I. exposes America’s obsession with guns, questions the senseless killings of African American men by both blacks and whites, and the imminent need for social retribution. With T.I.’s “Warzone” and “Black Man,” guns are featured as a complex entanglement of both violence and protection as the tragic impetus for executions...Continue reading