21 Savage struck a nerve with power like artists before him
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about the countless criminal charges that the government can utilize to take someone down. The ginormous US penal code grants the country the same ability that police use while trailing a car, waiting for the most minor of violations to pull over their suspect.
ICE arrested 21 Savage on Feb. 3 in Atlanta on the eve of Super Bowl LIII for being an “unlawfully present United Kingdom national,” per a statement from the organization. He entered the country legally in 2005, they said, before overextending his stay beyond the year he was granted.
Proving that the federal government used his status — which they long knew, according to his team — to score a political victory is nearly impossible. That would require direct connection between his critique of Trump’s separation of families at the border and the government’s attempt to deport him. Racism isn’t always explicit.
In a statement to CNN’s Nick Valencia, ICE extended further condemnation of the rapper, atypical of a procedural arrest. “His whole public persona is false,” they said. “He actually came to the U.S. from the U.K. as a teen and overstayed his visa.” 21 Savage didn’t just break the law, he’s inauthentic. ICE hit a rapper with one of the chief insults in hip-hop — fraudulence — and the public complied.
Twitter rang out in laughter, 21 Savage appeared in photo-shopped British garbs, his lyrics reworked in British accents.
The implicit timing of the arrest was impeccable, one month after 21 Savage’s second album, I Am > I Was, topped the billboards for two weeks. Its single, the J. Cole-assisted mega-hit “a lot,” released inconspicuously online at first. Then 21 Savage’s manager laughed when he realized the physical albums didn’t sound the same. Cole’s verse about making millions and memes is missing on it, in favor of an inspired third verse by 21, capped with the bar that likely struck a nerve.
21 hit at the heart of the Trump administration — and global right-wing politics today — curbing migration. 10.7 million people that resided in the US in 2016 technically did so illegally, according to Pew Research Center. Though some of them, like 21 Savage, grew up for so long under those circumstances as Americans that there is no home to be deported to — the chief complication of an unfiltered deportation policy.
“Damn, I love my house,” he told the NYT. “I ain’t gonna be able to go in my house no more? I ain’t gonna be able to go to my favorite restaurant that I been going to for 20 years straight? That’s the most important thing. If you tell me, ‘I’ll give you 20 million to go stay somewhere you ain’t never stayed,’ I’d rather be broke.”
Immigration policy took a turn after the height of illegal immigration in the 1990s, with George Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump’s administrations deporting people in massive numbers. 21 Savage, a Grammy-nominated rapper, held such prominent status since his breakout 2016 that he couldn’t possibly have resided in the shadows beyond the view of authorities.
In 2018, he left the country to perform in Canada with Post Malone. He applied for a visa that victims of crimes can receive in 2017, after his presence in a shooting, according to the Daily Mail. Jay Z stepped up to call his arrest a “travesty” for how long his visa application stayed in review, then hired attorney Alex Spiro to assist him. 21’s legal team said they never hid his status, and argued his lack of threat to society should grant him reprieve from deportation.
ICE’s personal and legal attack put him on the defensive, forced to account for past run-ins with the law and affirm his moral standing in society. To stay at home, 21 had to prove he’s worthy of being an American.
His birth in England, when today’s immigration discussion centers on the Mexican border, prevented him from gaining much solidarity for that. He became the government’s example that they are not strictly deporting Mexicans.
To undermine his rap credibility, the government attacked his attachment to Atlanta. If he’s inauthentic, his verse about the border carries less weight. Despite 21’s worst fears, deportation may never have been their end. ICE knew it could disrupt his life and image even without it after he slighted them at their most vulnerable point of public criticism — child separation.
That bar drew national attention during a Jan. 28 performance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, one of 21’s final appearances before his arrest. He rapped the border verse while sitting down and in his monotone style, dragging behind the beat. The faint trio of backing singers resonated nearly as loudly as him, rounding out a performance powerful in its simplicity.
21 Savage is even-keeled, never high, never low, and the only emphasis he placed on his social commentary was standing up for the verse.
In an era filled with stripped-back instrumentals, mumbled deliveries and simple rhymes, 21 occasionally goes as far as to whisper his verse. His accent and liberal use of the ad-lib “21” are distinguishable. Little else flashes loudly around him. Perhaps Hip-Hop’s most discrete voice, his violent, jabbing lyrics still resonate.
Yet he was not manufactured to be a voice of social change. At least not the same way Vic Mensa’s activist spirit and Meek Mill’s life in front of the camera put them in position to do so. He waded into political waters anyway and struck a nerve, thrusting him into the national spotlight.
“I feel like me putting it into music got me in this situation,” he told The New York Times, lamenting yet aware of his role. “I represent poor black Americans and I represent poor immigrant Americans. You gotta think about all the millions of people that ain’t 21 Savage that’s in 21 Savage shoes.”
The potential silencing of 21 Savage would be the latest in a long line of examples of the government utilizing criminal action to silence a hip-hop artist. In the 1980s, 2 Live Crew, a Miami hip-hop group, assumed one of the largest battles of their era, profanity. They produced the raunchiest music while the industry and government butted heads over the balance of explicit content and freedom of speech. 21 Savage’s status — in an era defined by immigration debates — similarly transformed him into a figurehead.
2 Live Crew’s sexually-driven music is evident in the title of one of their greatest hits, “Me So Horny,” one of their array of tracks that brushed against obscenity codes at the time. A judge ruled that As Nasty As They Wanna Be had “probable cause” to be deemed obscene and banned it in public. Under Florida law, members of the group were arrested for performing their songs in public.
Attorney Jack Thompson led the effort to set up stores to sell the album to teenagers, leading an owner to be jailed. He provoked various judges to make similar rulings, sparking a freedom of speech movement across the country. A jury eventually acquitted 2 Live Crew of obscenity. Speaking about their victory in the Hip Hop Evolution documentary, they credited their efforts with saving hip-hop as a means of expression.
The parental warning sticker emerged in that era as a compromise, but did not veil hip-hop from the law when it incited the rage of those in power. The government targeted 2 Live Crew’s lyrics explicitly and failed to silence them. Now, an implicit battle over 21 Savage’s legitimacy seeks to silence him.
Dina LaPolt noted in the New York Times that 21 Savage struck his nerve with the Fallon performance:
“There was scuttlebutt after the Jimmy Fallon show” coming from “some very high levels in Washington,” LaPolt added. What she heard suggested that 21 Savage had ruffled feathers.”
His legal team moved him to California under threat of recourse. Then Atlanta’s celebration of its Hip-Hop scene drew him home. Upon arrival, the state arrested him, calling him an alien in his city of over one decade. With access to his papers, or lack thereof, they waited to apprehend him until the world’s eyes rested on Atlanta.
But like Vince Carter — born in Daytona Beach — birthed basketball fandom across Canada, 21 — born English — advanced Atlanta rap regardless of where he originated.
For now, the rapper will fight his case in the manner that he protested in — discretely. He’s hesitant to lead his cause forward vocally, but opened the door for more people to hear what he had to say in the first place. That decision by power to pursue him may create long-term staying power for this controversy. Even as its lead figure says little.
