For Shawn Carter, who is professionally known as Jay Z, the war on drugs in the United States is a failure, so he is calling for a change. Pointing racial injustice as a contributor to the problem, the rapper narrated his message as the images of artist Molly Crabapple display on screen in a video statement.
Jay Z cites the effects of the United States drug war on the black and Latino communities and its failure to solve drug use in the New York Times-published multimedia op-ed. The current rates of drug use are as high as in 1971 when Nixon declared the drug war. Forty-five years later, the drug war still fails, which should prompt the lawmakers to check on the existing policies.
"In the 1990s, incarceration rates in the U.S. blow up," Jay Z said in the piece. "Today we imprison more people than any other country in the world: China, Russia, Iran, Cuba -- all countries we consider autocratic and oppressive."
Such incarceration increase has been with minority communities. Drug cases for people with skin color are still handed out mandatory sentences in most states.
Authorities made a line to differentiate those who sold powder cocaine from those who sold crack cocaine although the drug is the same. Crack is still associated with black people.
Jay Z's video is the product of Hampton's intention to discuss why white men were poised to get rich doing the very same thing that African-American boys and men had long been going to prison for. The question was raised in 2014 by Michelle Alexander, the author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."
Meanwhile, Jay Z will have a TIDAL benefit concert with wife Beyoncé on Oct. 15 at Brooklyn's Barclays Center, the New York Post reported. The power couple collaborate with The Robin Hood Foundation, the non-profit organization that fights poverty in New York.
Tickets of the TIDAL charity concert will range from $50 to a $100,000. Benefits of the event will go to Robin Hood, children's education initiatives in New York City and any other charities that will be nominated by the celebrities involved.
Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj and Lauryn Hill are expected to be in the line-up. The benefit concert will be live-streamed on Tidal.
Check Jay Z's take on the drug policy in the U.S. here: