Practice What He Preach.
Tears are being shed all the way through the Academy's auditorium. There's not a dry eye in the house at the Oscars this year as these two sing together. But we aren't talking about this year's close coupling of pop turned movie megastar Lady Gaga and 'A Star Is Born' star and director Bradley Cooper's 'Shallow', as "Ha...woah, oh, oh" soaring as that is. But a much deeper cut almost amazingly a half decade back in 2015. Before #OscarsSoWhite. Before Trump. But echoing pain from the past that still needs healing to this very day as you read this. Collaborating for then the third official time ('The Rain' came after) after the classic collection 'Be's' beautiful 'They Say' and the sheer power of 'The Believer' off that and 'The Dreamer' album, greatest conscious rapper of all time Common and the legacy making by the record like his last name himself, John Legend and the strongest choir in unison with G.O.O.D. Music brought 'Glory' to the Oscars and the most inspirational figure of peace Martin Luther King Jr's message from 'Selma'. Stars like the King himself David Oyelowo, Coretta's Carmen Ejogo and even Captain Kirk, Chris Pine were streaming with emotion that night.
Fast forward to this New Year and following the fun of bringing a classic Christmas record under our tree this year with old and his own standards like the Nat King Cole and Bublé best in 'A Legendary Christmas', John wakes up in the middle of the night with his dear wife Chrissy Teigen sleeping by his side. He hears an electricity buzzing out side in his reverie and walks out of his room and straight into the middle of the open night where he sees a solitary door aglow waiting for him to walk through. Which he does right into a Basketball gym that belongs to the high-school team the Birmingham Patriots. He sees a light, flashing from another doorway and before he can register what is happening as he wakes up kids emerge from it, running and screaming. "Every day I wake and/Everything is broken/Turnin' off my phone just to get out of bed/Get home every evening/And history's repeating/Turning off my phone 'cause it's hurting my chest". And so begins the start of the song and vivid visual that evokes the same struggle in John Legend's powerful 'Preach'. A song arguably as important, to this time relevant and even more incendiary in its incentive for a movement to march than his 'Glory' with Common. But with the man in the mirror reflecting the world call to action of the bridge that closes this millennial generation gap of, "And heaven knows I'm not helpless, yeah/But what can I do?/I can't see the use in me crying/If I'm not even tryna make the change I wanna see," Legend furthering more than his does more than just give us the song in a career of 'Ordinary People' relatable classics and 'All Of Me' wedding first dances with much more meaning. Leaving us with a collective conscious lump in our throats John shows us that it's about more than he, us or the music. Whilst at the same time showing us he is one of the most important and influential artists of our time and the closest thing we have this generation to the coming change of a Sam Cooke. So far his 'Practice What You Preach' crowdfunder has raised almost $19,000 of its 55 thou dollar target just weeks after this videos release. And he is also working on a documentary series with the family of Trayvon Martin. Another young life lost way too early and unbelievably now so long, but still so fresh ago that this song is dedicated to.
"I can't sit and hope/I Can't just sit and pray, that/I can find a love, when/All I see is pain
Falling to my knees/And though I do believe/I can't just preach, baby, preach/Whoa, oh/I can't just preach, baby, preach," John sings with everything he's got in the middle of this same night as the blue and red flashing lights of a police car cruises behind him, stalking his steps as like a pastor he lets out the full force of his ad-libs to show the fight in him pushing through the pain. It's an iconic visual and moment in a video as real as it harrowingly gets. As the next day this is the same cop car that in broad daylight pulls over two young black men who comply fully. From dropping the keys out the window to walking backwards towards the guns drawn with their hands up. Meanwhile nearby a young white man looking anxious and distraught is sitting in his own car undisturbed with a black bag riding passenger. John then sings from the pulpit in church at a memorial for the same young man. The same young man who was pulled over and then shot down by the police whilst all his peacefully protesting friend can possibly do is watch with a camera phone and record another injustice that the courts will end up swiping away with no application to the truth. Meanwhile whilst this happens and yet another grieving mother shaking a chain-link like prison bar fence is having her child taken away by border control. The young white boy in the other car takes his black bag to the same school that belongs to the Patriots. The bag does not contain gym gear. It contains an assault rifle. Emphasis on the word, "assault". And after the running and the screaming. All we are left with is motionless bodies. Some look like they are merely sitting down. Others asleep at lunch. And then of it wasn't clear as day then the ones lying all around the school as still as the life they once had will move you to your core. And as John dressed in Church regalia and a crowd in protest piercing us with their pupils as they look to us through the fourth wall is met by another of police in riot control gear to their peaceful stand behind God, all the tears are replaced with gas. As this protest is taken apart by billy clubs and violence. And the image of John's clergyman being cuffed and put in the place of the same cop car is all we're left with. A somber and sobering note of "no justice, no peace" that we all wish in reality we could make sense of as the guilty go free and the innocent trying to make change remain in chains. Hate cures nothing. Love is the only way. And as this all comes to a head the angel wings of the fallen kid from another police shooting looks to what we all should in something higher. Sitting uptop the very same cop car. "All I hear is voices/Everybody's talking/Nothing real is happening, 'cause nothing is new/Now when all is tragic/And I just feel sedated/Why do I feel numb? Is that all I can do?" After all. We can't just preach. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
"I can't sit and hope/I Can't just sit and pray, that/I can find a love, when/All I see is pain
Falling to my knees/And though I do believe/I can't just preach, baby, preach/Whoa, oh/I can't just preach, baby, preach," John sings with everything he's got in the middle of this same night as the blue and red flashing lights of a police car cruises behind him, stalking his steps as like a pastor he lets out the full force of his ad-libs to show the fight in him pushing through the pain. It's an iconic visual and moment in a video as real as it harrowingly gets. As the next day this is the same cop car that in broad daylight pulls over two young black men who comply fully. From dropping the keys out the window to walking backwards towards the guns drawn with their hands up. Meanwhile nearby a young white man looking anxious and distraught is sitting in his own car undisturbed with a black bag riding passenger. John then sings from the pulpit in church at a memorial for the same young man. The same young man who was pulled over and then shot down by the police whilst all his peacefully protesting friend can possibly do is watch with a camera phone and record another injustice that the courts will end up swiping away with no application to the truth. Meanwhile whilst this happens and yet another grieving mother shaking a chain-link like prison bar fence is having her child taken away by border control. The young white boy in the other car takes his black bag to the same school that belongs to the Patriots. The bag does not contain gym gear. It contains an assault rifle. Emphasis on the word, "assault". And after the running and the screaming. All we are left with is motionless bodies. Some look like they are merely sitting down. Others asleep at lunch. And then of it wasn't clear as day then the ones lying all around the school as still as the life they once had will move you to your core. And as John dressed in Church regalia and a crowd in protest piercing us with their pupils as they look to us through the fourth wall is met by another of police in riot control gear to their peaceful stand behind God, all the tears are replaced with gas. As this protest is taken apart by billy clubs and violence. And the image of John's clergyman being cuffed and put in the place of the same cop car is all we're left with. A somber and sobering note of "no justice, no peace" that we all wish in reality we could make sense of as the guilty go free and the innocent trying to make change remain in chains. Hate cures nothing. Love is the only way. And as this all comes to a head the angel wings of the fallen kid from another police shooting looks to what we all should in something higher. Sitting uptop the very same cop car. "All I hear is voices/Everybody's talking/Nothing real is happening, 'cause nothing is new/Now when all is tragic/And I just feel sedated/Why do I feel numb? Is that all I can do?" After all. We can't just preach. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
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