Widely considered to be the first great American protest song, Billie Holiday’s 1939 masterpiece “Strange Fruit” carries a significant outcry against lynching that could only have been expressed through the jazz legend’s heartbreaking vocalization. The song’s lyrics—derived from a 1937 poem penned by Abel Meeropol—are stark, horrifying, and incredibly powerful, even if they don’t mention any specific people or place.
In the decades following Holiday’s recording—which was named the song of the century by TIME magazine in 1999—artists would come to explicitly honor and eulogize critical Black leaders in statement records. In 1964, activist, instrumentalist, and blueswoman Nina Simone lamented key civil rights crusader Medger Evers one year after his assassination on “Mississippi Goddam,” singing to his grieving supporters and staunch NAACP advocates who were devastated at the loss. With lyrics like “Alabama’s gotten me so upset/Tennessee made me lose my rest,” the song also mourned the four adolescent Black girls who were victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham, along with struggles amid desegregation in the Southern states.
Protest anthems have also shown bursts of joy, like Stevie Wonder’s 1980 song “Happy Birthday,” a dedication to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that—along with Wonder’s campaigning—directly led to the civil rights icon’s birthday becoming a federal holiday three years later. Over the years, music referencing our greatest Black figures in activism and politics has evolved, although some noteworthy songs have been considered offensive, and one or two artists have landed in legal feuds with the individuals name-checked.
In honor of Black History Month, we dug deep into Genius lyrical data to explore how pivotal Black leaders—including some seldom-mentioned but hugely important individuals—have been referenced in songs and perceived by singers and rappers across decades.
The lyrical callouts of Dr. King are nuanced, as songwriters reference his most notable speech, “I Have a Dream”; salute his nonviolent demonstration tactics; and reimagine the late visionary surviving his 1968 assassination. King is mentioned by his full name or the acronym MLK in nearly 2,000 songs, most of them hip-hop. Nearly one decade after the genre began in South Bronx, rap pioneers like Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy hailed the king on their definitive ’80s classics Raising Hell (“Proud to Be Black”) and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (“Show ‘Em Whatcha Got”), respectively. As hip-hop’s golden age transitioned into heavily militant and hardcore rap, artists like Ice Cube perpetuated the violence that was enacted on Dr. King in his final moments, perhaps being rankled with one of Black America’s most painful losses.
In the outro of Cube’s 1991 track “My Summer Vacation,” the West Coast rap icon grimly parallels Dr. King’s assassination to the beating of Rodney King by members of the LAPD. The rapper also demonstrates his compulsion for violence at the time, ahead of the L.A. Riots that occurred after the four officers who brutally pummeled Rodney King were acquitted the following year.
We’re gonna do you like King
What goddamn King?
Rodney King, Martin Luther King, and all the goddamn Kings from Africa
Songs from OutKast to 2Pac alludes to the violence that often takes place on streets named after Dr. King, with rappers claiming they can withstand the areas’ dangerous conditions. On The Carters’ 2018 song “Black Effect,” JAY-Z proudly declares that he’s “good on any MLK Boulevard,” despite the MLK-named locations being historically found in impoverished and marginalized communities.
We’d be remiss not to mention activist and author Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s wife and anchor, who held the torch for her late husband until her passing in 2006. Lyrical allusions to Scott King can verge into misogynoir, like Sada Baby and Drego’s “Bloxk Party,” or expressions of the utmost respect, as in Rapsody’s “Hatshepsut.” But on the 1996 Nas and Lauryn Hill hit “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That),” Nas envisions Scott King as a woman-in-charge who takes on mayoral duties.
I’d let Coretta Scott King mayor the cities, and reverse fiends to Willies
At the beginning of the year, the Kings’ youngest daughter, Bernice King, fought the misconception of her mother being “a prop,” as the efforts of her parents were the catalyst for change amongst Black populations. Lyrically speaking, the couple deserves due regard on wax.
If Dr. King brings out abstract lyricism in artists, Muslim spokesman and human rights torchbearer Malcolm X ignites the most radical ideas. Roughly 1,000 songs memorialize X, who just three years before Dr. King’s assassination was gunned down in New York City, where he consistently spread Black nationalist ideologies. Similar revolutionary messages live on in the verses of rap pioneers and modernists. However, X, a known jazz enthusiast, might have been more partial to the 1970 Leon Thomas and Pharoah Sanders tribute “Malcolm’s Gone,” where Thomas refers to the social change agent as his assumed names, including Malik El-Shabazz.
But make no mistake: Instances of X’s name aren’t reserved for conscious artists, although Public Enemy (“Welcome to the Terrordome”) and an early-’90s 2Pac (“Words of Wisdom”) made exceptional cases for the man once known as “Detroit Red.” Singers have also evoked the defiance of X, notably Beyoncé, who featured an excerpt of X’s “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?” speech in her 2016 Lemonade visual album. In the film and its companion LP, she name-drops X on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” depicting a woman scorned.
Bad motherfucker, God complex
Motivate your ass, call me Malcolm X
Other lines represent X as resistant to Dr. King’s nonviolent strategy, which reflects actual history, as X criticized King’s push for racial unity. This was represented in X’s call to arms, as he articulated a strong stance for Black Americans to use their Second Amendment right for protection. Whereas JAY-Z opened up “Black Effect” with Dr. King’s nickname, the chorus’ third line cites the famous 1964 photograph that captured X peering out of his window while holding a rifle.
See my vision with a tech, bitch, I’m Malcolm X
References to the same Don Hogan Charles photo are plentiful, as artists like suave wordsmith Big Daddy Kane (“Here Comes the Kane”) and Southern rhymer Gucci Mane (“Peepin’ Out the Blinds”) have rapped about the image.
Before X entered the Sunni Islam faith, he was a disciple and assistant minister for Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, helming the religious and political institution beside The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan succeeded X after his death, and the NOI head and Million Man March organizer aligned himself with rap since the genre’s inception, as some rappers were of Muslim faith or affiliates of the Black nationalist movement Five-Percent Nation.
Farrakhan has been shouted out in nearly 800 songs, according to Genius data. Among the most prominent artists to do so recently is Jay Electronica, who sampled archival speeches from Farrakhan and swore allegiance to him twice on Noname’s 2023 track “Balloons.”
I run with the mighty ’Khan as we expose the liars
Couldn’t stop my boca from quotin’ quotes from the senseis
If anybody asks, tell ’em Farrakhan sent me
Artists who cite the influence of X and Farrakhan mainly act as avengers to X’s death and uphold Farrakhan as a prophet while praising both of their abilities as orators.
The impact of Rosa Parks—who’s been mentioned in about 950 songs—is where lyrics about Black history get a little hairy. Some artists contextualize Parks’ frustration at being told to sit at the back of a public Alabama bus in December 1955, as 21 Savage does on “Baby Girl,” but the lyrics of others have been deemed a mockery. Take “Yikes” by Nicki Minaj, where Nicki raps at the end of the first verse, “All you bitches Rosa Parks, uh-oh, get your ass up, uh.” Then there’s Young Thug’s on “Ridin,” where the Atlanta rapper brazenly proclaims, “I can fuck a bitch on a bus like she Rosa Parks.”
But the problematic bars would’ve been nothing if OutKast hadn’t kicked down the door on “Rosa Parks” in 1998. For using her name in the title and referencing her historic act of protest in the tongue-in-cheek—yet considerably insulting—chorus (“Ah ha, hush that fuss / Everybody move to the back of the bus”), Parks sued the Atlanta rap duo and their then-label, LaFace Records. Parks’ suit was dismissed in the late ’90s but refiled in 2004 and settled the following year. Parks took home an undisclosed amount, and Outkast was absolved of any wrongdoing, but the song is tame in comparison to other ill-mannered lyrics about Parks, many of which have gone unchecked. As hip-hop sorts out its esteem for Parks, no other song that mentions her has met the same backlash as Outkast’s Aquemini hit.
Distinguished Black Panther Party members are recognized in hip-hop for their strength and sacrifices. The figures name-checked in songs include—but are not limited to—the organization’s co-founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, as well as loyalists Assata Shakur, Fred Hampton, and Eldridge Cleaver. Shakur escaped from prison and fled to Cuba after being convicted of allegedly killing a state trooper during a 1973 New Jersey Turnpike shootout, and Common commemorates her on his 2000 track “A Song for Assata.”
Arguably the most popular of BPP shoutouts belongs to JAY-Z, who likens himself to Hampton on “Murder to Excellence,” a song off his and Kanye West’s 2011 Watch the Throne album.
I arrived on the day Fred Hampton died, uh
Real niggas just multiply
As that line states, Hov was born on December 4, 1969, the same day Hampton was gunned down in Chicago as part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program in an attempt to destroy the BPP.
Associates of the BPP have also been heralded in music. For example, there’s multi-hyphenate activist, author, and intellectual Angela Davis and her ally George Jackson, one-third of 1970s mutinous prison group the Soledad Brothers. Davis (who’s turned up in roughly 140 songs) and Jackson were shown empathy in ’70s rock ‘n’ roll and folk music, with The Rolling Stones disapproving of Davis’ imprisonment on 1972’s “Sweet Black Angel” and Bob Dylan expressing sadness over Jackson’s death on a 1971 song named after him.
Songs about the BPP and those related to the organization hold emotional weight, as internal conflicts and bloodshed contributed to its decline by the early ’80s.
Music has long shown a willingness to “Fight the Power” on behalf of Black Americans. After Shirley Chisholm broke barriers as the first Black woman in Congress and the first to run for president as a member of a major party, she became a favorite political matriarch across hip-hop. On 1988’s “Nobody Beats the Biz,” Biz Markie proudly shares who made his ballot.
Reagan is the Pres but I voted for Shirley Chisholm
Almost 40 years later, Barack Obama would fulfill Chisholm’s hopes for a Black person to take the Oval Office, and artists relished in his presence. Obama has been referenced in more than 950 songs, chief among them Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.,” where he flexes his first-name basis with the 44th U.S. President.
I blew cool from AC, ayy, Obama just paged me, ayy
I don’t fabricate it
In the years since the Obama Administration, Black Americans have encountered an onslaught of police brutality, injustice, and murder, signaling a time of political unrest. With this tumultuous time has come a wealth of new protest songs, including Lamar’s “Alright,” D’Angelo’s “The Charade,” Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture,” and Beyoncé’s “Freedom” and “Black Parade”. Since the early 2010s, there have been about 900 lyrical references to Black Lives Matter, the decentralized social movement that’s become the focal point of American antiracist action in the 21st century.
For better or worse, complex lyrics about historical Black pillars will resound, and rising artists can learn from the many musical highlights and missteps of the past.
