Lil Wayne Dropped By Mountain Dew Over Offensive Lyrics

Lil Wayne has lost his biggest corporate sponsorship deal, with Pepsi’s Mountain Dew dropping the rapper after the controversy surrounding his lyrics on Future‘s remix of Karate Chop, in which he compares rough sex to the death of civil rights figure Emmett Till.

Till was a 14-year-old African American teenager who was beaten to death in 1955, sparking the US civil rights movement. Weezy’s lyric ‘Beat the pussy up like Emmett Till’ understandably caused outrage from the victim’s family, who made a statement encouraging the public to stop buying Pepsi products. Wayne then issued a statement acknowledging the family’s hurt, but stopped short of actually, you know, apologising, and the Till family rejected the paltry offering.

The sponsorship drop is going to hurt Lil Wayne’s pockets. The rapper was a major spokesperson for the Dew, starring in several commercials for the soda. Mountain Dew seems to be drawing a hard line against racism right now – Odd Future‘s Tyler, The Creator had a commercial he directed for the beverage pulled from the airwaves earlier in the week after political analyst Dr. Boyce Watkins described it as “arguably the most racist commercial in history”.

Wonder if we’ll be seeing Wayno pull a Rick Ross? Ross caused outrage amongst women’s rights groups last month over lyrics that seemed to advocate date rape but didn’t issue a real apology until sponsor Reebok dropped him, showing that money really does do all the talking.

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