{"id":94203,"date":"2017-03-15T23:31:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T03:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=94203"},"modified":"2017-03-15T23:31:50","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T03:31:50","slug":"empires-jussie-smollett-gets-political-in-new-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/03\/15\/empires-jussie-smollett-gets-political-in-new-video\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Empire’s’ Jussie Smollett gets political in new video"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"While<\/a>
While TV star Jussie Smollett was in the recording studio working on his own music apart from \u201cEmpire,\u201d set for release later this year, he couldn’t help but write a song about what’s going in the world, from injustice to President Donald Trump. (Photo: Jussie Smollett\/ Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2013While TV star Jussie Smollett was in the recording studio working on his own music apart from \u201cEmpire,\u201d set for release later this year, he couldn’t help but write a song about what’s going in the world, from injustice to President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

That’s when he penned \u201cF.U.W,\u201d short for \u201c(expletive) up world,\u201d around President’s Day and immediately directed a music video to bring his words to life. The clip will debut late Wednesday on his YouTube page.<\/p>\n

The black-and-white video features men and woman of various ethnicities and highlights injustices, from human and LGBT rights to religious and racial prejudices. A woman wears a hijab in one scene, a boy wears a hoodie in another and four women put their fists up as they stand in front of the words, \u201cMy body, my rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis song is for the oppressed. That’s why I feel like people will connect with it because it is very broad, because oppression is so broad,\u201d he said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

In another scene, a man in a wheelchair runs over a Donald Trump mask.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat mask is a representation of this false idea of patriotism. And that mask is a representation of this idea of white male privilege,\u201d 34-year-old Smollett said. \u201cIt’s so much bigger than him. It’s what he represents, and it’s because of that representation, that’s why he’s the president of the United States currently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s our opportunity to take those masks off and shatter them, so that’s what I did,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Trump’s apparent mocking of a disabled reporter was widely criticized last year. Some of Smollett’s \u201cF.U.W.\u201d lyrics focus on Trump and his administration: \u201cWhy are we back in the past?\/It’s the same script different cast\/All of these alternative facts\/Catch me outside how about that?\/Why is it so hard to keep hope?\/Who got that popular vote?\/Was the whole thing just a joke?\/Was the whole thing just one big joke?\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Trump fired back at rapper Snoop Dogg days after the release of a music video in which he points a toy gun at a clown dressed like Trump and pulls the trigger.<\/p>\n

Trump tweeted: \u201cCan you imagine what the outcry would be if ?SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediate return a request seeking comment about Smollett’s video, which also features a black man standing in front of a noose, images of barbed wire and two water fountains with \u201cwhite\u201d and \u201ccolored\u201d signs above them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had written so many other great songs for my album, but this just felt like ‘I can’t wait for the album, I can’t wait for a single,\u201d’ said Smollett, who plans to release an official single this summer. \u201cYou couldn’t follow, you know, normal rules or normal protocol with this, you just had to get it out and luckily Columbia (Records) stood behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the presidential campaign, Smollett and other \u201cEmpire\u201d cast members appeared in an ad endorsing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

Smollett, who was one of the kid stars of \u201cThe Mighty Ducks\u201d film, is set to appear in Ridley Scott’s science fiction film \u201cAlien: Covenant\u201d this year. He said it was \u201cfreeing\u201d to release a song apart from his \u201cEmpire\u201d persona, and he challenged himself by directing the video.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the song means so much to me and the message means so much to me, and what we’re going through right now means so much to me, I wanted to do it justice. And I knew what was in my mind would do it justice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013While TV star Jussie Smollett was in the recording studio working on his own music apart from \u201cEmpire,\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":94204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[16695,16694],"class_list":["post-94203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-empires","tag-jussie-smollett","mauthors-mesfin-fekadu","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}