Hip Hop artist J. Cole's music video for his single "Crooked Smile" was released online today, and has taken the internet in a storm--of tears, which is one of the last things one would expect from a hip-hop music video.
The single also features a collaboration with TLC's "T-Boz" and "Chilli" (TLC has not released a single for eight years, making this a refreshing new comeback), and the music video is a chilling take on the war on drugs.
In the video, Cole is a drug-dealer, albeit a particularly non-violent one, decorating a birthday cake and inviting his parents over to his little girl's birthday party. It also features a character from the DEA, also a single father, shown at the beginning of the video eating breakfast with his daughter. At the climax, the DEA raids Cole's character's home, with one of the officers accidentally shooting Cole's little girl during the commotion. The touching video shows that there is more than one side to any story, and that those who suffer most are the innocent who get caught in the middle.
Cole has dedicated the video as a tribute to Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old girl who was fatally shot in the middle of a police raid in Detroit. The police officer who fired the shot, charged with involuntary manslaughter, had claimed that the gun went off when the girl's grandmother tried to take his weapon, but the grandmother Mertilla Jones denied this ever happening, with another police officer testifying there had been no struggle of any sort. Police had been looking for murder suspect Chauncey Owens, who had been reportedly hiding out in the house where Aiyana lived.
A dedication to Aiyana appears towards the very end of the video, followed by the statement: "...please reconsider your war on drugs."
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