PepsiCo Inc severed ties with rapper Lil Wayne on Friday over a graphic reference to slain U.S. civil rights figure Emmett Till in a song.
Lil Wayne, 30, had been the face of the PepsiCo drink Mountain Dew’s “Deweezy” campaign, a play on the rapper’s “Weezy” nickname.
“We do not plan any additional work with Lil Wayne moving forward,” a Mountain Dew representative said in a statement. “His offensive reference to a revered civil rights icon does not reflect the values of our brand.”
The Deweezy campaign website was taken down.
In a remix of the song “Karate Chop” by rapper Future, Lil Wayne likens the beating of Till to sex.
The song was leaked onto the Internet in February and prompted an apology from Future’s record company, Epic Records, after Till’s family had complained.
But the controversy did not stop there. In a letter to Till’s family this week, Lil Wayne called the reference “inappropriate” but stopped short of an apology.
Till, an African-American from Chicago, was beaten and murdered in 1955 at the age of 14 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in the village of Money, Mississippi, where he was visiting family.
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