Lil Wayne performs onstage during the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards at Staples Center on September 6, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
A source tells theGrio PepsiCo is ending its association with rapper Lil’ Wayne, an endorser of the soft drink Mountain Dew.
Dissolving the partnership is a direct response to Wayne’s song lyric which referenced Emmett Till, the 14-year-old who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman.
Wayne apologized for the lyric after members of Till’s family objected, but his semi-apology was not accepted.
Now, the song has cost him his endorsement deal.
A Mountain Dew spokesperson told theGrio “We do not plan any additional work with Lil Wayne moving forward. His offensive reference to a revered civil rights icon does not reflect the values of our brand.”
Mountain Dew was already under fire for a web video produced by rapper and leader of the Odd Future collective Tyler the Creator, which featured a goat participating in a criminal lineup as a physically abused white woman is terrified by subliminal threats not to identify him.
h/t – Grio
