Erykah Badu has never been shy when it comes to speaking her mind, and Kelis doesn’t hold back either. The two singers shared a message that was originally posted on Twitter by Josh Kun — saying if they want to support black lives, pay black artists.

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Yesterday I shared this on Twitter where it received more attention than probably anything I’ve ever written. Thanks to a powerful repost by @stiklori it made its way to Ms Badu and Kelis and hopefully many more musicians I admire. I have been teaching about this with my students for years and we call the dream project THE BIG PAYBACK- a digital ecosystem of musical reparations that would allow/force companies to redistribute profits to the Black musicians they should have gone to in the first place. The music industry was built on racial capitalism, structural inequality and exploitation and it continues to today. I have planted this seed with various execs over the years and get lots of amens but not surprisingly zero action. So…just putting it out again. Now is the time: if you are a musician, if you work for a label or streaming service or publishing co etc, if you have the data tools, please comment or DM so we can actually build this. The project requires the history and knowledge but also the data and the influence to manifest the development of the project at the highest levels. Who’s in?

A post shared by Josh Kun (@joshdkun) on Jun 3, 2020 at 6:03am PDT