Mdespite its 70,000 spectators and 110 million viewers, the Patriots’ victory at the 53e Super Bowl may not remain in the memory of the people of Atlanta the main event that took place in their city on Sunday, February 3. It was rather an arrest carried out in the streets of the capital of Georgia, shortly after sunrise, that caught their attention: that of the rapper 21 Savage, become in less than three years an essential voice of the local and national American music scene, in the footsteps of T.I. or Childish Gambino, also from the ninth largest city in the United States.
In the history of rap, we no longer count the arrests that have only strengthened notoriety concerned artists, often critical of police action, to a large audience. But that of 21 Savage could jeopardize his career: he who cultivates his image of a street child in Atlanta, denouncing text after text the prevailing racism and the poverty tinged with violence in which he grew up, has been imprisoned by the immigration services. In reality, he is not an American: he is a British citizen.
Demi Lovato leaves Twitter
In the evening of Sunday, the immigration agency explained in a statement that the “British citizen” Sha Yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, known as 21 Savage, was the subject of an eviction procedure for having lived in the United States since 2005 without having had his residence permit renewed. The announcement in turn caused misunderstanding, incredulity, then hilarity on the part of many American internet users, who are quick to divert the lyrics from their songs by suddenly finding references to them in the United Kingdom: “Shooters dressed in red” he evokes become so soldiers of the British Empire.
@TMZ This what 21 savage meant when he said “I got shooters dressed In all red” https://t.co/DHbmjTAcH1
His reference to a “Garage big enough for twelve cars” is illustrated by a red double decker bus.
This why 21 Savage needed a 12 car garage https://t.co/0gN3Kj59OH
The singer Demi Lovato, for saying on Twitter that “The jokes on 21 Savage are [sa] favorite part of the Super Bowl », referring to an image of an English author writing using a feather, she was taken to task for daring to laugh at this inquiry. The artist with 53 million subscribers, exasperated by critical messages, then decided to leave the social network by deleting his account.
“If 21 Savage is not from Atlanta, who really is?” “
From 2017, the magazine Complex claimed in a portrait that rapper Sha Yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph was born in 1992 in Dominica, former British colony which became independent in 1978. Arrived at the age of 12 in Atlanta with his ten brothers and sisters, 21 Savage would have retained the British nationality inherited from his parents, but did not renew his American papers, valid only one year after his arrival in the United States . Asked about the case, the British Foreign Office simply commented on Monday evening: “Our services are in contact with the lawyer of a British citizen detained in the United States. “
“If 21 Savage is not from Atlanta, who really is?” “, however reacted, on Twitter, a resident of the city, emphasizing the artist’s legitimacy to represent it. “We are the real Atlanta, we are really on the street”, has always claimed the rapper, who managed to build a solid reputation as a local throughout his adolescence. His numerous tattoos partially trace its history: the sword between his two eyes, inspired by a tattoo of Tony Montana in Scarface, is a tribute to one of his brothers, killed in a shooting. Three names are inscribed on his chest: Larry and Johnny – two of his best friends, murdered – and Tamika, Larry’s mother, killed at the same time as her son.
After a difficult schooling – 21 Savage was expelled from his college for the first time in the fifth year – he definitively left school at 15. “I hung around, I stole guys, I shot others. I was hanging out with a rapper I knew who needed a tough reputation, he explained to the magazine Rolling Stone. It was through him that I met Sonny [Digital], then Metro [Boomin, deux producteurs d’Atlanta]. They pushed me to rap. ”
Since then, 21 Savage has had successes, accumulating more than 200 million views on YouTube with the title No Heart in 2016 and almost 230 million with Ric Flair Drip two years later. His collaboration with Post Malone on Rockstar ranks first in the music rankings in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2018. He has not escaped some controversy: a conviction for drug possession in 2014, and a series of excuses after a song, one sentence of which is considered anti-semitic – basketball player LeBron James, who had relayed it, apologized too.
Despite his incarceration, the rapper remains nominated in the categories of best album and best song at the Grammy Awards, the American music awards, which take place on February 10 in Los Angeles. But the first elements of the investigation, which would have been opened ” many months ago “ against him, do not seem to go in the direction of an imminent release.
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