Rapper Talib Kweli Says His Life Was Threatened in Ferguson

Rapper Talib Kweli has been an active voice on the unrest in Ferguson. He clashed on-air with CNN’s Don Lemon and decried the media coverage as being too focused on rioting and looting. And now, in a new interview with Billboard, Kweli says that when he was in Ferguson, his life was threatened and he was almost arrested for reasons he wasn’t entirely clear about.

Kweli recounts how a police officer threatened to “blow my fucking head off.” He says he was chased and witnessed others next to him get tackled by the police, explaining, “The cops were tackling people like lions tackle gazelles.”

And he recounts how he almost got arrested:

They pointed guns at my group and they made us lay on the ground while they secured the area. And there was a black cop who got upset at the way the police were treating us. He said, “These people didn’t do anything. You have to let them go.” If he didn’t step up, I would have been arrested.

Kweli said weeks ago that the media coverage has been too focused on rioting and looting instead of the “righteous, justifiable anger” residents have over Michael Brown‘s death.

[image via Joe Cereghino]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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