One of the greatest rap songs of all time “The Storm From The Outlawz” is a perfect example of what’s possible when the lines between the artist and the audience is blurred. The song tells the story of a young black man named Emmett Till, who is murdered in Mississippi. The singer then went on to record a song which included a reworked version of this tragic incident, called “The Storm”. It became a huge hit and remains to this day the most famous protest song ever recorded.
Emmett Till was only fifteen years old when he was killed, but he was already facing a lot of challenges in his life. He had a mother who was not interested in seeing him succeed, so she would rather have one or two white men take care of her son. When Emmett was sixteen, he met an older white man who was interested in taking him away from home. He was lynched on the side of a Mississippi highway for resisting an attempt by a white mob to rob him. Emmett Till never had the opportunity to tell his story in detail, because his mother had been lynched, but what she did say about her son changed his story forever.
In his song “The Storm”, Emmett Till makes it clear that he did not mean to provoke any violent reaction from the white men he encountered that day. Instead, he was more like a child than an adult, trying to make friends with the men that he felt would respect him as a man.
Another way that this story is different from many other songs is that it features the death of a white person. When a white man gets killed by a black person, they are usually killed by another black person. However, when Emmett Till was murdered, he was the victim of another white man.
In order to show what would happen if Emmett Till had not been killed, the singer takes us back to the events before the murder happened. He goes into detail about how Emmett Till, a young boy with big dreams of going to college, decided to go out one night with his friend from school, Julius Clarke. and a white woman named Mary Washington. At one point, they come upon some women who were yelling at each other.
Because of their history, Emmett Till felt the need to defend himself. He tried to walk away, but Mary Washington grabbed him and threw him to the ground. They scuffled, until Emmett Tills mother came running into the fight and grabbed Mary and pulled her away from him.