‘Grocery Stores Ain’t Safe’: Buffalo Rapper Benny the Butcher Addresses Hometown Massacre on New Track
Benny the Butcher is raising money for the families of the 10 victims of the racially motivated mass shooting in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. On Monday, the rapper released his track “Welcome to the States” addressing the massacre and the need for reform.
“Ideologies formed on hate,” Benny raps on the Kendrick Lamar “We Cry Together”-sampled track. “Now the grocery stores ain’t safe.”
The black-and-white music video — which has a fundraiser for the National Crime Victim Bar Association and other organizers helping the shooting victims’ families tied to it — laces clips of grocery stores and American imagery with historical clips of the Ku Klux Klan.
“Mass shooting in my city, eight minutes from where my block at. Saw innocent people shot at a supermarket I shop at,” he raps, before ending the song with an audio clip from President Joe Biden’s speech addressing the shooting.
The gunman in the Buffalo shooting was wearing military-style clothing, body armor and a helmet and was armed with a high-powered rifle. He had apparently traveled more than 200 miles to attack the supermarket, located in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Eleven out of the 13 people shot were Black, officials said, while the other two were white.
“The shooter was not from this community,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said Saturday. “In fact, the shooter traveled hours from outside this community to perpetrate this crime on the people of Buffalo.”
Authorities previously said Gendron had traveled more than 200 miles from Conklin, New York, to the Tops Supermarket with a rifle, opened fire, and killed 10 people. He had allegedly published a 180-page manifesto where he pushes the great replacement theory.
Those killed in the shooting rampage are:
- Roberta Drury, 31
- Margus D. Morrison, 52
- Andre Mackneil, 53
- Geraldine Talley, 62
- Celeste Chaney, 65
- Heyward Patterson, 68
- Katherine Massey, 72
- Pearl Young, 77
- Ruth Whitfield, 86
