H.E.R. does her part to uplift the Black Panther Party in the “Fight for You” music video, which premiered Tuesday (March 9).
The music video starts off with a white police officer shooting a Black man in New York in 1971, with H.E.R. narrating from her father’s shoe repair shop. “Last night they killed one of us… again. More fuel to a raging fire you can’t pray away. Not with a gun pointed at your back or the ground at your face,” she says over footage from the Fred Hampton biopic Judas and the Black Messiah. “I think back to what my father says: ‘Strange fruit, it gets too bitter to taste.'”
Fast-forward 50 years later to 2021, and the R&B singer is helping her father deliver pairs of black shoes to loved ones with Hampton’s famous proclamation “I am a revolutionary” stamped on the heel. Despite the history of violence against the Black Panther Party repeating itself in the visual narrative, “Fight for You” invokes the undying spirit of the revolution and pays homage to its past and present members.
“Fight for You” was nominated for best song from a motion picture at the 2021 Golden Globes and best song at this year’s Critics Choice Awards. The song is expected to gain a nod in the best original song category at the 93rd Academy Awards, when nominations are announced on Monday.
H.E.R. is slated to perform alongside Yolanda Adams, PJ Morton and Freddie Gibbs & Alchemist on Wednesday for the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective’s inaugural event ahead of the 63rd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday. She and Adams are two of the six artists who were elected to the BMC’s leadership council in October.
Watch the “Fight for You” music video below.