There’s a lot you can say about Lupe Fiasco, but not that he lacks passion. When apparently repeatedly derided on Twitter why he wouldn’t vote he went on the following rant:
Just lettin you “Lupe Dumb Cuz He Don’t Vote” crowd know that if y’all don’t #LeeMeAlone my niggas #YallGoneGetThisWork #FL2Sept25
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) september 20, 2012
Yo @rolandsmartin obama ain’t gone lose cuz of me and my raps dawg…Now I’m begging you bruh bruh #LeeMeAlone or #YouGoneGetThisWork !!!
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
Sick of u uppity black niggas hiding behind your political correctness…MLK JR would be ashamed of yall…we still dying in these streets..
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
Wasting away in these prisons and trapped in mental slavery and all you niggas can come up with is VOTE your way out?!?
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
Nigga what about the 4 yrs in between? DL hughley righteous ass still ain’t hollered about dropping that bread…u niggas is the worse #Work
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
I got slave blood in these veins nigga this system you want us to participate in at 1point until very recently didn’t recognize my humanity.
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
Let me heal from the wounds of 400 years of institutionalized agony and destruction first…then maybe I’ll think about voting…
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
For a system and a government that kills and steals all over the fucking world with impunity and heartlessness for sake of what???
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
Not even in the name of GOD, in the name of corporate profit!! i aint voting 4 dat shit. U can unfollow if u want but #YallGoneGetThisWork
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) September 20, 2012
Like everybody else, Lupe has the right to make his own choices and to defend those. His reference to people not doing enough to chance the world is understandable, but invoking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in your reasoning not to vote? That’s a bit of an odd choice.
But, even more, all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic traditions and its is democracy turned upside down.
So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.
- Martin Luther King, before the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington, May 17, 1957
