Westside Gunn, Conway The Machine, and Benny The Butcher all responded to the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo over the weekend on social media. The racially-motivated hate crime carried out by 18-year-old Payton Gendron left 10 dead and three injured at a supermarket in a predominately Black neighborhood.
“PRAY FOR BUFFALO,” Gunn wrote in a brief tweet afterward,
“My heart goes out to all the families and friends of the victims and everyone that was impacted by this senseless act of racism and violence. This is beyond unfathomable,” Conway wrote in a post of his own. “Prayers up for my city!”
Bennett Raglin / Getty Images
Outside of Griselda, several more artists took the time to speak out about the tragedy, including Chance The Rapper and Justin Bieber.
Benny shared a video asking that people stop expecting celebrities to post a response to every tragedy on social media. He explained that he’s always going to be helping his community even if it’s not shared online.
“Stop taking this opportunity to antagonize the people that’s here that’s doing better than you,” he said in a video. “First and foremost, like I say, I’m gonna do anything that my community needs me to do — I already been doing it. But guess what? It’s not to get y’all approval. Fuck y’all!”
Gendron was apprehended by police on the scene immediately after the shooting. He currently faces life in prison.
“This was pure evil. It was a straight-up racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community, outside of the City of Good neighbors … coming into our community and trying to inflict that evil upon us,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said at a press conference.
Check out the posts from the Griselda rappers below.
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