By Ismael AbduSalaam
Lil Wayne has an unlikely verbal opponent on the heels of the phenomenal first day sales of Tha Carter III.
On the track “Misunderstood,” Wayne blasts Sharpton’s civil rights
work as fraudulent and compares his tactics to boxing promoter Don
King:
“You see, you are no MLK/ You are no Jesse Jackson/ You are nobody to me/ You’re just another Don King with a perm/ Just a little more political/ And that just means you a little more un-human/ Than us humans/ And now let me be human by saying/ F**k Al Sharpton and anyone like him”
Sharpton contacted Current TV's blog The Daily Fix and offered his own retort to the superstar MC.
“While some of the rappers don’t like the fact that Rev. Sharpton has been leading marches against the degradation of women in music, a Gallup poll released last week revealed that Rev. Sharpton has a 50% approval rate among African-Americans. So why dignify a response to one rap artist who doesn’t even say anything substantive," Rev. for Sharpton said.
Rev. Shaprton recently made headlines for leading the movement against Nas’ new album, previously called Nigger.
The album, a concept project detailing the use of the word in popular
culture, was condemned by Sharpton and threats of boycotts resulted in the album now being untitled.
Last year, Sharpton also engaged in a brief but bitter war of words with rapper/activist David Banner over censorship in Hip Hop music.
Tha Carter III was released on June 10th, and is expected to sell over
800,000 copies by next week.