What Lil Baby Said in Message to Joe Biden During Grammys 2021 Performance
Rapper Lil Baby used his performance at the Grammys to send a message to President Joe Biden and tackle the subject of police brutality.
The 26-year-old Atlanta-born artist performed his hit "The Bigger Picture," which was released in June last year during the widespread summer Black Lives Matter protests, at Sunday's Grammy Awards.
His performance started with footage of a Black man being told to get out of a car by two white police officers.
After cooperating with them, the officers force the Black man to the ground and handcuff him. Moments later, the man is shot as he attempts to run away.
The scene transitions to Tamika Mallory, co-founder of the Women's March, who delivers a speech behind a podium while protestors hold anti-racism signs in the background.
She said: "It's a state of emergency. It's been a hell of a year. Hell for over 400 years. My people, it's time we stand. It's time we demand the freedom that this land promises.
"President Biden, we demand justice, equity, policy and everything else that freedom encompasses. And to accomplish this, we don't need allies, we need accomplices. It's bigger than black and white.
"This is not a trend, this is our plight. Until freedom."
Lil Baby then rapped the lyrics to his song, which reference the death of George Floyd and the protests and riots that were sparked by it.
His Grammy performance came just over a week after the jury selection began in the trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin.
Protestors gathered outside a highly-fortified Minneapolis courthouse, with many holding signs expressing solidarity with Floyd's family.
A juror was dismissed after she said she couldn't understand why Chauvin kept his knee pressed on Floyd's neck when he said he could not breathe.
Defense attorney Eric Nelson also noted the woman, a mother of three from Mexico, said in her jury questionnaire that she wanted to be part of the trial "to give my opinion of the unjust death of George Floyd."
On March 3, President Biden and House Democrats moved the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to the Senate after it was approved 220-212, along party lines.
It is arguably the most ambitious police reform effort in several decades and would ban chokehold and "qualified immunity" for law enforcement, as well as creating nationwide police standards.
Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA), who authored bill H.R. 1280, told the press on March 3: "We are still trying to transform policing in the United States. We will be able to have a bipartisan bill in the Senate that will reach President Biden's desk."
