SpoeYah, a socially conscious hip-hop group releases their latest video called "It was a Brotha". The song itself was originally released in January of 2019 and published by Silent Whisper Music, an independent music label. It is not your typical commercialized hip-hop video. The song features 3 rappers from 3 different generations: 83-year-old Daniel Anderson, 51-year-old Patrick Jaye, and 22-year-old MarQuaja Fields. The music video is an outcry of anger, sadness, and disapproval of black men who senselessly murder, or rape, or rob African Americans within their own communities.
"Since 1976, more than 290,000 black men have been killed in America," says Patrick Jaye, CEO of Silent Whisper Music. He goes on to say "The Bureau of Justice Statistics documented 275,981 black homicide victims between 1976 and 2005. The FBI's Crime Data Explorer documented 98,517 black homicide victims between 2006 and 2019. That is a total of roughly 374, 498 black homicide victims. And with approximately 22.5 percent of those victims being black females; when you do the math, that means African Americans suffered more than 290,000 black male homicide victims between 1976 and 2019."
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report African Americans were accountable for 129,346 arrests for violent crimes in 2019. That is 1 violent crime every 4 minutes. Blacks were also accountable for 29,677 arrests for robbery in 2019 according to the FBI's UCR agency. That is 1 robbery every 17 minutes. "To make matters worse blacks were accountable for 54.7% of robbery arrests between 2010 and 2019. Black males have been silently self-destructing for years," says Patrick Jaye.
According to theFBI's Uniform Crime Report agency African Americans were accountable for 4,427 arrests for rape in 2019 and another 5,903 arrests for sex offenses non-related to rape. That is one sex crime every 50 minutes. That does not count the more than two thirds of rapes and sex offenses that go unreported according to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest, National Network). If you add the silent two thirds it equals out to 1 rape every 39 minutes and 1 sex offense nonrelated to rape every 29 minutes.
Patrick Jaye went on to say, "'It Was a Brotha' is a song that stresses the seriousness of our condition in hopes that African Americans will become more motivated to pursue the cure, which is ultimately spiritual growth. We can use spiritual growth as a tool to fight crime. This is a spirit issue. Money and government programs are not going to solve this problem. Those of us who believe in GOD must be spiritually aggressive. We must encourage and teach the beauties of spiritual growth to juvenile delinquents, repeat criminal offenders and others. We have to experiment to find a variety of ways to show others that there is more value in spiritual growth than financial growth. You can't force someone to change, but you can plant the seeds of change in them and then pray that those seeds grow strong."
The new hip hop video can be seen on YouTube or Facebook. The group originated from a family music CD created for their family reunion in 2013. After the project was completed, they decided to share and include other families in future projects and thus SpoeYah was born.