Sometimes rap lyrics can inhabit a gray area where the faux bravado and mixed messaging overlaps with issues of established taste and morality.
Vanessa Bryant, widow of NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, believes rapper Meek Mill stomped all over the bounds of decency with references to her late husband’s Jan. 26, 2020, helicopter crash that also took the lives of eight others, including the Bryants’ 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.
Kobe Bryant was 41.
The words in question were leaked online last week, according to E! News.
“This b—- I’m f—— always tell me that she love me/ but she ain’t never showed me,” the lyric in the unreleased song reads, according to Bryant’s Instagram story. “Yeah, and if I ever lack, I’m goin’ out with my chopper/ it be another Kobe.”
Vanessa Bryant posted her distaste on Monday.
“Dear @meekmill, I find this line to be extremely insensitive and disrespectful. Period. I am not familiar with any of your music, but I believe you can do better than this. If you are a fan, fine, there’s a better way to show your admiration for my husband. This lacks respect and tact.”
Meek Mill (real name Robert Rihmeek Williams) via Twitter, responded by writing, in part: “[Expletive] your feelings … I don’t think we on the same signal y’all… I don’t see what y’all see.”
He subsequently clarified those words were not meant to target the Bryants and, in a separate tweet posted early on Tuesday, he wrote: “I apologized to her in private earlier today not to the public…
“Nothing I say on my page directed to a internet viral moment or the family of a grieving woman! If you care about someone grieving change the subject!”
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