The rapper, whose second annual STEEZ Day Festival benefit concert took place July 7 in Los Angeles, used the festival as an opportunity to speak on the police shooting at local radio stations.
When Bada$$ visited L.A. hip-hop and R&B station Real 92.3 he talked about how he believed there is a segment of U.S. society that wants to eliminate black Americans.
"What they want to start is this war and they want to start this war so they can obliterate all of us at one time and bring on an uprising, a revolution, a rebellion because the cancerous foods are not working fast enough, the economic suffering is not working fast enough, the chemical warfare is not working fast enough," said Bada$$.
"Not only do we keep surviving, we keep not fighting back so they're literally pushing us to our limit and that's what's going to happen in America. Because this is going to keep happening. And black people we're just gonna get tired of it and we're just not gonna be able to take it any more. There's no other way that we're gonna be able to do it and that's just sad, what's going on in America right now."
At Power 106 FM, another L.A. area hip-hop station, Bada$$ expanded on his views, saying that black Americans need to "fight back intellectually" against police and systematic violence.
"People gotta be real careful on the way that they stand up and fight back," Bada$$ told host Justin Credible. "I'm not saying that I'm not with the fight-back... but it's what they want. They want this war and they see that it's not working and they see that
"We're in a really devastating time right now, no pun intended, we gotta really be careful about what we do as people and we gotta fight back intellectually on a mental plane because it's deeper than just the physical warring and killing each other and we really just got to get down to the bottom of it."
Bada$$ also made a recent lengthy Instagram post covering similar territory. In that post he wrote, "It is for sure time that we as a people stand up for human right and rebel against the system unapologetically," read the Bada$$ post. "I just want everyone to be cautious about how they go about it because this is all a part of the government’s plan. They are literally begging for this to happen so they can kill us off faster using uprising and rebellion as the excuse.
Bada$$ also challenged gangs "to do a better job at protecting our communities and not assisting in destroying them," adding "who do we call when the police break the law??" before finishing with the questions "What are we going to do? When will true justice be served?"
The STEEZ Day Festival was a benefit concert to honor Pro Era founder Capital STEEZ. Proceeds from the show, which featured ASAP Mob, Danny Brown, Raury, Hodgy Beats, Dirty Sanchez, Dizzy Wright as well as a guest appearance by ASAP Rocky, will go to benefit the family of STEEZ, who committed suicide in 2012.
Watch Joey Bada$$ speak at Power 106 FM
Nike