*The Internet had a good time pointing out the awkwardness of Mary J. Blige singing an a cappella rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin (41 Shots) directly to Hillary Clinton.
The moment was from a sit down interview with the Democratic presidential candidate during Blige’s new Beats 1 show, The 411. Blige didn’t expect the clowning that followed the teaser’s release.
Today, the entire interview was released, finally showing the singing moment and Clinton’s full response in its proper context.
The Q&A began with personal questions of the former first lady — Clinton’s relationship with her mother, her faith, and how she deals with the challenges that come with being a public figure — then pivoted toward issues facing her campaign, including the epidemic of police brutality within the black community.
That’s when Blige broke out in “American Skin (41 Shots),” which Springsteen wrote following the 1999 death of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times by NYPD officers who say they thought he was reaching for a gun, when he was actually reaching for his wallet.
Springsteen dedicated the song to Trayvon Martin during a 2012 concert, and Blige chose to sing the lyrics to Clinton during this part of the interview instead of speaking it.
“Where do we go from here? What is the first thing you would do to begin the healing process with all of this? What do we do?” Blige said after she finished singing.
“I’ve been so heartbroken over what’s been going, on because it’s fundamentally … wrong that African American parents have to sit their children down and deliver the message you just sang: ‘Be careful,'” Clinton responded. “And yet we still have so many terrible deaths, some at the hands of the police, many at the hands of others, like Trayvon Martin, whose mother I’ve gotten to know so well. I think we’ve got to be honest, that there needs to be a greater opening of our hearts to one another. We have to put ourselves in each other’s shoes, feel the pain that a mother and a father feel when their son and daughter can go out the door and they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.
“I particularly want white people to understand what that’s like, and to feel that they must be a part of the solution,” Clinton continued. “There’s a lot we need to do. We need to do better training and work with our police so that they don’t immediately draw the wrong conclusions — like the song said, ‘a gun, a knife, or a wallet’ — and that they learn better ways to de-escalate tension and violence rather than to escalate and perhaps cause a death. I’ve met with lots of police officers. Many are honorable and very concerned about this as well, but we’ve got to do a better job to improve our policing, and improve our relations between our police and the communities they serve. You should have people respect the law, and the law should respect people.”
Watch the entire interview below:
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