Rapper T.I. Shares A Powerful Message In New Music Video "Warzone"

Rapper T.I. Shares A Powerful Message In New Music Video "Warzone"

Tamir Rice 

BHR Hollywood Reports..........In T.I’s powerful new visual “Warzone” the Atlanta native wanted to ensure that the other side “had the least amount of ammunition to oppose our message.” And by “other side” Tip means anyone who deems the concerns of African-Americans as unimportant and not based in fact.

 T.I. recreates the deaths of Tamir Rice (a 12-year-old killed by police while playing with a toy gun in Cleveland), Eric Garner (who died after being placed in an apparent chokehold by NYC policemen) and Philando Castile (shot and killed by a St. Paul, Minnesota police officer during a traffic stop) with white victims taking their place.

Eric Garner 

 The goal, T.I. says, is to simply start a serious conversation that has far too often devolved into a shouting match.

Hip-hop star T.I. is best known for vividly rapping about his days as a youth hustling on the streets of Atlanta and in his words "having a good time," but a series of controversial killings of unarmed African-Americans -- some of which were captured on video -- has compelled him to step outside of his comfort zone

Philando Castile 

"The first thing that [the video's director Laureal Richardson and I] wanted to do was make sure that it was powerful enough to create the type of dialogue necessary to inspire some form of change," the 35-year-old rapper told NBC News. "We just kind of tossed it around and we came up with re-enacting the events and then he came up with the idea of the role reversals."

"We wanted to give 'the other side' -- and when I say the 'other side' I don't mean police, I don't mean white people, I mean people who think we're just overreacting, the 'All Lives Matter' people -- we wanted to give them the least amount of ammunition to oppose our message," he added.

"And the way to do that, we thought, was to go with the most atrocious of all of the travesties. And don't get me wrong, there are still more that are equally atrocious, but for the purposes of our video ... those were the ones that seemed most effective."

According to T.I., it's the insidious nature of modern prejudice which makes the topic so toxic.

"White supremacy [used to be] in the forefront of America's sights and thoughts. You knew where you stood, what position you held in this country, good bad or indifferent.

Now, it is covertly done," he said. "It is covertly done through the judicial system, the financial system, the educational system and some may even say through medicine.

So it being so covert -- those who either don't know or want to pretend they don't know can act as if it doesn't exist when it really does.

And the only people who ever really see it, feel it, or acknowledge it, are the ones who are affected by it. And that to me is what makes it much more difficult to combat because you can't fight what you can't see."

With "Warzone," and his upcoming new EP "Us or Else," T.I. is using his celebrity platform, charisma and flair for the dramatic, to make the realities of racially-motivated violence unavoidable.

The video, first premiered on the artist-owned streaming service Tidal on Sept. 8, but was later featured on other sites Friday (Sept. 16) Check out the gripping clip below.