Popular rapper Toomaj Salehi wrote songs in support of the protest movement in Iran following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022. He has been in jail for over a year.
Popular Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death over his role in supporting the protest movement triggered by the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, Iranian reformist newspaper Shargh Daily reported quoting the musician’s lawyer.
“Branch 1 of Isfahan Revolutionary Court … sentenced Toomaj Salehi to death on the charge of corruption on Earth,” the singer’s lawyer Amir Raisian told the newspaper.
The charge covers a broad range of offenses including those related to Islamic morality and can carry the death penalty.
Salehi, 33, was arrested for showing support for anti-government protests, following the death of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022. He had also written songs about the protests.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m talking about people who single rap out or make it the butt of a tasteless joke.
If someone feels the need to joke that everyone who likes or makes rap should be executed, you really just need to take a look at the demographics that listen to or create rap music, and you get a distinct picture of what they don’t like about the rap community (spoiler: it isn’t the music).
And if you ask someone what they like to listen to, and they don’t give a real answer and single out rap as the only genre they dislike, they’re not actually telling you what they like or don’t like, they’re just taking a jab at part of Black culture for the sake of signalling their disapproval.
If you don’t like rap music aesthetically, it’s pretty easy to convey that without sounding like a racist by dismissing the entire genre as if the world would be a better place without it, because people notice when someone focuses their vitriol specifically at PoC cultural strongholds.
I personally don’t listen to much rap, and don’t consider it my style, but I’m sure has hell not going to insult it or the people who enjoy it, because I respect people’s aesthetic and cultural differences and don’t reflexive hate Blackness.