Dee-1 has heard what all the online critics have to say, and he’s finally addressing them in his new song, “Lines Drawn.”
And with lyrics like “All I hear y’all talk about is your money in large amounts / Must think accountability is your ability to count / It’s not, that’s why this culture lukewarm / Intoxicated with ignorance,” it’s clear that Dee-1 will continue to hold Hip Hop’s feet to the proverbial fire.
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“I did this song as a response to the industry being so shaken by me drawing a line in the sand and saying that we need some accountability for the messages we’re glorifying inside Hip-Hop,” he said in a statement provided to HipHopDX. “This is part one, there’s more on the way. A shift is happening from a genre and cultural perspective,”
Dee-1 maintains that his public critique of Jim Jones, Rick Ross and Meek Mill was meant to bring about positive change as he continues to work toward that.
During an interview on B High TV that aired on November 11, the Louisiana rapper once again aired his side of what many see as a squabble. In doing so, he insisted that he was coming from a place of love when he singled out some of Hip Hop’s biggest names, urging them to set a better example for their listeners through music.
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“Jim Jones, I love you; Meek Mill, I love you; Rick Ross, I love you,” he began. “The world wants it to become something negative and unhealthy, but let’s make sure we use this as an opportunity to educate and to communicate.
“And if that means we can be friends at the end of this — cool. If we can’t ever be friends — cool, all good. Just go be a better man of God and I’ma try to be the best man of God I can be, and it’s gucci.”
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The back-and-forth started when Dee-1 called on Meek Mill, Jim Jones and Rick Ross to consider the impact of their lyrical content.
“Jim Jones, you could do better, brother,” he said. “I love you too much to not be honest with you. Rick Ross, you could do better, brother. Meek Mill, you could do better, brother! I love you too much not to be honest with you. Oh, you the face of prison reform? Or are you sitting here on your new song with Ross talking about getting somebody murked and shot at the red light? Which one is it, bro?”
None of the stars he pointed to have taken kindly to the criticism, with each of them addressing it in their own way. Most recently, Jones stopped by Sway in the Morning and shared his thoughts on the New Orleans MC namedropping him on air.
“He could have reached out,” Jones said. “That avenue of talkin’ to me is out. You heard? I would have loved to have had a conversation with that young man to enlighten him on certain things when he was mentioning my name. I had the same conversation with [Louis] Farrakhan.”
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Jones recounted: “[Farrakhan] summoned me for sayin’ his name. ‘If you know not what you’re talking about, young man, let me school you to what you’re doin’.’ You heard? And he once told me that I said certain things about certain people that I wished I didn’t as I got older.”
Going back to Dee-1, he explained that he felt the dialogue could have been handled differently and proceeded to defend himself and his peers as artists, saying: “Our music is rough. But we grew up in rough places. So when we talkin’ about these rough places, we talkin’ about these things that we went through. You don’t have to go through it!”
