Derek Minor Releases Video for his Single “Free” & Tackles The UpRoar

Award winning hip hop artist Derek Minor released a new visual for his recent single entitled “Free”.  The recent murders of several African-Americans by law enforcement including the killing of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, struck a deep chord inside of Minor.  This motivated him to write and produce “Free,” which addresses the violence and disparities in our culture based on race.

“Free,” written, produced, and mastered by Minor within just three hours, conveys the anguish he feels inside, pondering the pain and fear of these experiences and troubling times. The music video for “Free,” which was conceptualized by Minor and directed by Patrick Tohill, was filmed a few days later.

Watch The Full Video Below:

Derek posted the following statement on Twitter (which has since been deleted the platform, but remains on his blog).

“I couldn’t sleep last night so I wrote this song. For the hurt… We shall overcome. God got us. #AltonSterling”

His statement was followed by an uproar of replies from a few fans who seemed to be unclear on his stance.  In order to give more clarity to those who seemed to misunderstand why he wrote this single, Derek wrote a longer blog post where he shared his heart and explained his perspective and reasons for writing “Free”.

Read a portion of that statement here,

“…We’ve seen more content uploaded to the Internet every day. Along with the funny, we’ve also seen some of the darker side of humanity archived on the Internet.  But it was a few weeks ago that I received a very disturbing one.  A friend sends me a link along with a text that said “Not Again.”  It was the video of the death of Alton Sterling.  My heart sank.  I told my wife that I needed to go to the studio.  She knows that’s my safe place.  I just intended on messing around on the keyboard but 3 hours later, the song “FREE” was mastered and on Soundcloud.

Who knew that in the next days we’d see the death of Philando Castille, the death of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, and international terror…”

Click here to read the full statement featured on his blog.

Click here to purchase “Free” on iTunes!

All proceeds and contributions connected to this single will be given to The Expectations Project to help end education inequality for students.  Go to http://hopeforstudents.org to get involved in creating positive change in our nation.