Mountain Dew Drops Lil' Wayne And Tyler The Creator!

One thing they never lost was the skateboard they're riding on.  Lil' Wayne and Tyler The Creator were let go of their Mountain Dew endorsements. They've managed to stir the junk food media with their antics.

To all reading: Understand that rape is rape! There's nothing funny or creative about it! 

And by the way, if you don't snitch: You get sentenced! Help solve a crime, don't be a part of it!

Who would of thought a heavily sugared soft drink would draw such controversy?

I understand that these agitators in the entertainment industry are entitled to their opinions. They're creative artists. The most popular are subjected to the most criticism.

If you're on the top, you're expected to lead the way! Shame that everything you're saying is looked under the microscope.

Not saying that most rappers are role models, but I don't see any of them going into a public school telling a class that it's cool to be an entertainer or media mogul!

Tyler the Creator of the rap group Odd Future and Lil' Wayne are now facing a public backlash over their endorsement of Mountain Dew. Under pressure PepsiCo dropped the rappers. MTV reports that Tyler the Creator and Lil' Wayne are pretty much upset over the whole ordeal.

Lil' Wayne appears on Cash Money Records. He is affiliated with Young Money Entertainment.
Tyler The Creator appears on Odd Future Records.
Future appears on A1/Freebandz/Epic Records
Rocko appears on A1/E-1 Entertainment
Rick Ross appears on Def Jam. He is affiliated with Maybach Music Group and Slip-N-Slide Records.

First, there's a video circulating over the internet that the junk food media considered "racist".

The ad features a White woman, a handful of Black guys and a goat.

The ad was a battered woman who is being interviewed by a detective in a fingering room. The woman who was clearly injured had to single out a handful of suspects. There were Black suspects and a goat. The woman fingered the goat and the detective was drinking a Mountain Dew.

Well according to the junk food media the ad was horrible and was deemed offensive.

'There's no type of hate being portrayed in that work of art at all,' Tyler says of his banned Mountain Dew ad.

Tyler singled out Black activist Dr. Boyce Watkins for the ad drop.

[You know this older Black] dude, Dr. Boyce Watkins, I guess he found it racist because I was portraying stereotypes, which is ridiculous because, one, all of those dudes [in the line-up] are my friends."

Tyler explained that there were absolutely no intended racial undertones in the ad, which was simply supposed to tell the story of a crazed goat who went as far as assaulting a woman on his quest to secure more Mountain Dew. "It's just a goat. I just think a goat is funny. It's no deeper meaning," he explained. "I wasn't thinking, 'Oh, let's use all black [people]' or whatever. I wanted to use my friends. You know why? 'Cause I don't like using other actors. You can look at every one of my videos, and my friends are always in it. Saying that I'm racist — every video I got, Lucas is in it! He's a little scrawny white kid. So what is this dude talking about?"

Dr. Watkins had a slight change of heart, reaching out to Tyler on Twitter on May 2, writing, "Studied your music, I have an altered perspective. Still could do without the ad, but I think you were well-intended. #respect." Tyler obviously interpreted this as "I take back what I said."

"You're so quick to judge something that you don't know the context, you're so quick to call me a racist and other stuff, but he didn't know where I was coming from. But then he looked at what I have actually done, and now he wants to take his statement back," Tyler said in reaction. "'My daughters listen to you.' OK, that's confusing, because if I'm such a racist, and such a bad person, and feeding negativity to the youth, why are your daughters listening to me? That shows you're a bad parent and a hypocrite if your daughters are listening to me and I'm such a bad person."

"I was watching a 20-minute interview that Dr. Boyce Watkins had about me, and he said that I was feeding into my demographic of black pain," he added. "Dude, to keep it honest, a lot of black teenagers don't even listen to my music, and then he says I'm portraying that it's OK to be a thug. Are you serious? All my music is about being awkward and not fitting in!"

Despite his annoyance, he did try to understand where Watkins was coming from when he reacted. "Then again, I look at it from his perspective. He's an older black man. It's a generation gap. He's older than me. So the things that he had to experience with racism and stereotypes and being a black man in this country, is different from mine."

Who said Tyler isn't diplomatic? With all that said though, Watkins is still happy that the ad was removed. "I think that people believe that I regret telling Mountain Dew to take down the ad, I do not," he tweeted.

Mountain Dew is one of PepsiCo's most popular products.

The family of Mammy Till, the mother of slain teenager Emmet Till managed to get Mountain Dew to drop Lil' Wayne. Earlier this year, Rick Ross got his endorsement deal from Reebok dropped after he made a reference to "date rape" on Rocko's U.O.E.N.O. single.

On Friday, PepsiCo said in a statement that Wayne's "offensive reference to a revered civil rights icon does not reflect the values of our brand." It declined to provide any further comment.

A publicist for Lil' Wayne, Sarah Cunningham, said that the split was due to "creative differences" and that it was an amicable parting.

"That's about all I can tell you at this time," she said.

Wayne had sent the Till family a letter offering empathy and saying that he would not reference Till or the family in his music, particularly in an inappropriate manner.

But the Till family said the letter fell short of an apology.

"It's mindboggling to me that they partnered with him in the first place," said the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., a Till cousin and witness to his abduction. "Major corporations should scrutinize who they endorse, don't let greed or money determine who you sponsor."

Parker's written statement said Wayne's lyrics not only insulted Till's memory but degraded women as well.

Rev. Al Sharpton, who had been working with the Till family to arrange a meeting with Lil' Wayne and PepsiCo officials, said in a telephone interview that he hopes the decision ultimately is less about punishing individual rappers and more a cultural "teaching moment."

"Otherwise we're just waiting on the next train crash instead of trying to really resolve our problem and learn from these experiences and set a tone in the country that's healthy for everybody," he said.

Sharpton said that he and the Till family still plan to meet with PepsiCo officials next week.

The controversy erupted after Wayne made the reference to Till on Future's song "Karate Chop" earlier this year. He refers to a violent sexual act on a woman and says he wants to do as much damage as was done to Till.

The black teen from Chicago was in Mississippi visiting family in 1955 when he was killed, allegedly for whistling at a white woman. He was beaten, had his eyes gouged out and was shot in the head before his assailants tied a cotton gin fan to his body with barbed wire and tossed it into a river.

Two white men, including the woman's husband, were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Till's body was recovered and returned to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till, insisted on having an open casket at his funeral. The pictures of his battered body helped push civil rights into the cultural conversation.

Music and media industry executive Paul Porter, who comments on music issues on his website RapRehab.com, said he thought PepsiCo's decision was an effort by the company "to do the right thing now."

Their fingerprints are all over this one!

Porter, who had complained publicly and to PepsiCo about Lil Wayne and the Mountain Dew video by Tyler, the Creator, said the company is "doing a whole evaluation of the process" involving its commercials and musicians. His comments were based on his conversations with the company.

"I commend them for making this strong judgment," he said. "Lil Wayne's apology was not an apology."

Earlier this month, Rick Ross also lost his deal with Reebok after he rapped about raping a woman who had been drugged. As for the Mountain Dew ad by Tyler, the Creator, PepsiCo said it pulled the spot immediately after learning people found it offensive.

The ad portrayed a battered white woman being urged to identify her attacker from a lineup of black men and a talking goat that has appeared in other Mountain Dew ads. Tyler, the Creator has noted that the men in the lineup were played by his friends and members of Odd Future, a Los Angeles-based rap collective.

Now as usual, I don't endorse every boycott or sponsorship drop but if we could allow King Hippo to lose endorsements because of his controversial rants, then it's considered equal upon those in the entertainment industry.

Notice that Al Sharpton and Boyce Watkins were involved. Conservative agitators scorn at them for being "race-hustlas" and panderers of "anti-White" rhetoric. But the supporters look upon them when there's an issue and there's no one who can help.

No doubt, Lil' Wayne and Tyler The Creator will hit back at Mountain Dew, Bill O'Reilly, Boyce Watkins and Al Shaprton. It's assured that in a feud, a rapper will not rest until they've won the battle.

But in an age post Sandra Fluke and even the Steubenville rape trial, many women are calling out the sexism. Even President Barack Obama wasn't immune from criticism.

Being a pop culture icon in a nation full of cynics can be problematic. Especially in the age of Barack Obama.

Here's a few examples of rappers who embraced the culture of sexism, commercialism, homophobia, the crime and gun culture being dropped from endorsements after groups and conservative agitators rolled their tongues.

Ludacris (Pepsi), Snoop Dogg (The Muppets), Busta Rhymes (Mountain Dew), Chris Brown (Wrigley's), The Game (Reebok), and Shawty Lo (All My Baby Mamas), Hank Williams (ESPN), Ted Nugent (U.S. Military Bases and Discovery Channel), Sarah Palin (TLC and Fox News) are examples.

Some conservative agitators lost endorsements for their embracing of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophoia, the crime and gun culture.

Rush Limbaugh (1,000 endorsements), Dr. Laura Schlessinger (40 endorsements, 4 syndicators), Michael Savage (400 endorsements, 5 syndication companies), Glenn Beck (ABC, HLN, Fox News, 500 endrosements).



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