Global music sensation Justin Bieber released his sixth studio album ‘Justice’ on Friday, which has now become a topic of debate on the internet. Reason- the album features one of the most famous quotes by Martin Luther King Jr Justin has even credited the late civil rights icon as a songwriter.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” is the quote the album begins with. These words are from the late activist’s widely-published ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’, an open letter that he wrote on April 16, 1963, in response to ‘A Call for Unity’ during the 1963 Birmingham campaign.
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‘Justice’ consists of 19 songs, one of which is a one minute and 44 seconds-long piece titled ‘MKL Interlude’. This is a snippet of Martin’s sermon ‘But If Not’ that he delivered at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in November 1967.
The 27-year-old singer faced a huge backlash on social media for placing the snippet before ‘Die For You’, a song about true love and “profiting off of the civil rights movement”. Many even accused him of not taking permission from Martin’s family before releasing the album. But turns out, he did ask the family.
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Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter, Bernice King, has come out in support of Justin and thanked him for his album. “Each of us, including artists and entertainers, can do something,” she wrote on Twitter sharing a tweet of Justin and thanked him for supporting The Martin Luther King Jr Center, the official living memorial of the icon she heads.
‘Justice’ was the best-selling album in the iTunes Store on Friday. Song ‘Peaches’ from the album, was the fifth best-selling song and has already been viewed on YouTube over 10 million times.