Politics

Update: Flint Native Brings Water Crisis Rap Song to Larry Wilmore's Show

March 03, 2016, 7:08 AM by  Alan Stamm

A hometown tribute released in late January by Jon Connor had its national TV debut Wednesday on "The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore," Juulie Hinds previewed in the Detroit Free Press: 

Rapper Jon Connor, who was born and raised in Flint, will perform "Fresh Water For Flint" with "Grease Live!" star Keke Palmer, who sings on the track.

Connor also will participate in Wilmore's nightly panel discussion on the Comedy Central show.

Original article, Feb. 6:

"Think about how inconvenient that is" to live in Flint now, says hip-hop artist Jon Connor, a son of the city who took a recording break for an extended visit home from the West Coast.

“When things started getting crazy and crazier, I didn’t want to be in California while my mother, my friends, my aunts, my families, are going through this" water crisis, the protégé of Dr. Dre tells Mike Pizzo, a Las Vegas DJ ,in a post at Medium.

Connor, who's staying with his mother on Flint's north side, does volunteer work at the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan and the Flint Boys & Girls Club. Before coming home, he wrote and recorded "Fresh Water for Flint" with actress-singer Keke Palmer. (Soundcloud audio below.)

“That song wrote itself" in about 90 minutes, he says in the conversation with Pizzo. "I didn’t have to think about what to say.” Dr. Dre finished the mix in two days.


" I ain't quittin,' I ain't givin' up," Jon Connor sings in "Fresh Water for Flint."

The three-minute track opens with Michael Moore's voice at a January rally outside Flint Cty Hall. These are among the lyrics that follow: 

They say we're resilient
We got to be, we're livin' like hostages

Every time I go visit for Christmas, it seems like it’s more houses that's missing
It look like it's more houses that's boarded
Look like population control, they don't give a fuck, well that's what I call it!

For you this is a topic on Twitter
For me, listen, this where my momma is

It's like an experiment on us to see
If we break while they see where the bottom is.I

And they wonder why, and they wonder why we rebel?
We ain't never lived a fairy tale
We feel like somebody help us, God help us, so fixin' to give em' hell.

When it's said and done, I'm goin' to get up
We just got to be, we just go to be strong
And I ain't quittin,' I ain't givin' up
Got to keep my head up, until the pain is gone

Here's more of what the emerging artist, whose original name was Jon [pronounced “Yahn”] Freeman, shares in his Medium interview:

"For everybody else it’s a headline, it’s a cool topic to talk about, it’s the charity of the moment. For me, this is my mother, my friends, my little cousin.

"I know these little kids that the news is reporting on. The residents, the Flint natives that everybody is talking about -- these are my cousins, these are my relatives, my best friend. For me, it was like, I have to get home to check on my people. . . .

"A couple friends of mine do have people that are affected, that have hair loss, their kids have skin rashes and other stuff. It’s really sad to see, especially when this is a situation that is manmade. It’s not like a natural disaster. This is somebody who made a decision that knew that people could die from and it still happened.

"It’s scary because when the water isn’t discolored, it has a bleach smell to it, in which a strong odor comes from the water. So you’ve got a choice, either your water is discolored or it smells crazy. There are seldom cases when absolutely nothing is wrong with it. . . .  When I first got back, I saw people handing out containers to see how much lead in their water. It’s not a question of whether or not your water is contaminated. The question is, how contaminated is your water?" 

Featured_jon-connor-interview_20348

 


"What is the proper procedure to wash yourself with bottled water?"

Daily hygiene hassles 

”A lot of people are still trying to boil the water, for whatever that’s worth. What I personally have to do, since I’ve been here is find a friend that doesn’t stay in Flint, maybe in another community close to us, like Grand Blanc or Beecher, where they are getting water from a completely different source. You might go over to their house to use their shower.

"But think about that. Think about how inconvenient that is. Then try to brush your teeth using a bottle of water. If brushing your teeth is inconvenient, imagine trying to wash your whole body with a bottle of water.

"Let’s say you have kids, what are you supposed to do? Pour gallons of water in the tub to bathe one, then drain the tub and do it again for the other? What is the proper procedure to wash yourself with bottled water?" 

Long-term fix, not bottles

"This bottled water thing is a Band-Aid for the moment. . . . How long is that really going to last?

"And when it’s no longer the hot social trend to talk about and all of these celebrities are not talking about it, the people of Flint are still going to be living this.

"When Flint, Michigan isn’t trending on Twitter anymore, the residents are still going to be going through this. At the end of the day, the people of Flint still have poison water. I don’t care how many bottles of water you donate  —  and we’re not ungrateful at all  —  but let’s fix the problem instead of putting a Band-Aid on it.

"And the people and the children that are already poisoned, what do they do from this point on? . . . I talked to those kids at the Boys & Girls Club, looked them the eyes and told them that it’s going to be okay. It’s one thing to see it on TV, but I wanted to see these little kids.

"I’m watching these little kids play on stacks of bottled water in their gymnasiums. It’s a harsh reminder that their innocence and their childhood is being affected by this matter.”

Don't 'turn it into a race war'

I don’t want to make it solely about race, because there are white people that live in Flint, there are Hispanics that live in Flint. I think it’s a human issue. . . .  These are human lives.

“If this was poison water in an area of all white people, I’d say it’s wrong. If this was populated by all Hispanics, I’d say it’s wrong. I don’t want people to get so deterred and turn it into a race war that we forget that people are dying. . . .

"Let’s get back to helping these people. Let’s get back to figuring out how to save these people’s lives.”


Connor and Snoop Dogg in Flint. (Instagram photo)

In his sizable post, Pizzo fills in a bit of Connor's career background:

He had been releasing mixtapes on the hip-hop blog scene over the last few years, eventually catching the ear of rapper Xzibit, which led to the two of them touring together.

Xzibit promised Connor: “Whenever I get a chance to put your music in the right hands, I going to do it,” and then one day he got a call from Dr. Dre.

“I packed one bookbag of clothes and I was on a plane the same day. That was it, I didn’t come back. I hadn’t been home since, it was on. That was around summer 2013,” Connor recalls fondly.

After signing with Dre’s Aftermath imprint, Connor laid down two tracks on Dre’s final album, Compton, with “One Shot, One Kill” alongside Snoop, and “For The Love of Money,” a nod to the Bone Thugs ‘N Harmony song of the same name, also featuring Anderson Paak.

Connor is currently recording his Aftermath debut album and hopes to see it released in the summer of this year.

Here's the hometown tribute released last week:


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


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