Black Thought Pays Tribute to Trayvon Martin and Calls For Change

The Paramount Network has released an official track to go along with the upcoming debut of the documentary series Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story. It's a fitting tribute and call for change from The Roots' prophetic frontman Black Thought.

The track "Rest in Power" and accompanying video, equal parts eulogy and rallying cry, interweaves Black Thought's words with 911 calls and clips from the Rest in Power series, while Black Thought cites specific stats about the Trayvon Martin case.

"The shooter was unthreatened, seventy-one seconds / So many unanswered questions, I see reflections of myself / I feel like in fatherhood we are connected / Too long before the shooter was arrested / So wrong, worldwide, we've been affected / To them it's real, sins of the father remembered still / For every Trayvon Martin, there was an Emmett Till," he raps.

Black Thought also calculates how many days Trayvon was alive and ponders if the 17-year-old is still learning in spirit.

"I wonder if you're in Heaven's eleventh grade / Six thousand two hundred and thirty days / Too young of an early age, such evil and worldly ways."

Rest in Power is executive produced by Jay-Z as well as Trayvon Martin's parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin. The docu-series will unfold in six episodes, retracing the days before Martin's death, recapping the trial of George Zimmerman that sparked a national debate and connecting it all to the Black Lives Matter movement that followed.

Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story premieres Monday, July 30 at 9:00 p.m. ET on Paramount Network.

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