Jay Z drops new song ‘Spiritual’ calling out police brutality: ‘Don’t shoot’

Jay Z dropped an emotional new song about the killings of black men by police officers, “Spiritual,” Thursday night. “Got my hands in the air in despair/don’t shoot/I just wanna do good,” he raps on the track. The song, which was released on Tidal, was accompanied by a long open letter in which Jay Z […]

Jay Z dropped an emotional new song about the killings of black men by police officers, “Spiritual,” Thursday night.
“Got my hands in the air in despair/don’t shoot/I just wanna do good,” he raps on the track.
The song, which was released on Tidal, was accompanied by a long open letter in which Jay Z said he began writing the song “awhile ago,” and considered releasing it after the 2014 murder of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri.
“I’m saddened and disappointed in this America,” he wrote. “We should be further along. We are not. I trust God and know everything that happens is for our greatest good, but man … it’s tough right now.”
The song’s release came not long after Jay Z’s wife Beyonce published an open letter on her website Thursday in the wake of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both of whom were shot and killed by police officers. “We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our community,” she wrote. “It’s up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us.’”
Beyoncé also held a moment of silence during her concert in Glasgow, Scotland while standing in front of a large screen displaying the names of individuals killed by police.
She has also realised a statement on her site saying “war on people of colour and all minorities needs to be over.”
She said: “We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our communities,” Beyonce wrote in a statement on her website. “It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us.’ We don’t need sympathy. We need everyone to respect our lives.
“We’re going to stand up as a community and fight against anyone who believes that murder or any violent action by those who are sworn to protect us should consistently go unpunished. These robberies of lives make us feel helpless and hopeless but we have to believe that we are fighting for the rights of the next generation, for the next young men and women who believe in good.”
Sources: CNN.com & beyoncé.com