Freshly released album Justice by Justin Bieber features audio from Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches, which have attracted a lot of negative feedback.
The song “2 Much” starts off using audio from Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech where he says “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“MLK Interlude” is a minute-forty-four seconds of MLK’s voice starting off by saying that if you “have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, you aren’t fit to live.”
The final lines of the interlude, “You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth! You died when you refused to stand up for justice,” transitions into a song called “Die For You (featuring Dominic Fike),” where Bieber sings of his desire to get “the type of girl you only dream about.”
Twitter users didn’t think this was an appropriate intro for Bieber’s pop song, calling him “tone deaf” for the use of MLK Jr.’s audio.
im confused why this justin bieber album is called justice and has a whole mlk skit if it’s just about how in love he is with hailey bieber💀
— bri🤪 (@iamabriannaa) March 19, 2021
Justin Bieber starting an album called “Justice” with an MLK interlude pic.twitter.com/mbhiIOv9PA
— Joey (@2014joeyhillsdr) March 19, 2021
justin bieber profiting off of the civil rights movement as a white man is weird. his album is called ‘justice’ and has an MLK interlude but speaks nowhere of social justice, and is focused on love & relationships... huh?
— aly (@herestokesha) March 19, 2021
Justin Bieber has an “MLK Interlude” on his album. Then, an 80’s inspired pop song about dying for love comes on next. pic.twitter.com/11uBfJVGb3
— RacismSummitBookingAgent (@KirkWrites79) March 19, 2021
lmao at the way MLK jr is credited as a WRITER for a new Justin Bieber song bc he sampled “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” in a song about how much he loves his wife. No one asked for this pic.twitter.com/4gTW167cHd
— Mandy (@amandamwalton) March 19, 2021
pov: you just told MLK he’s on the new justin bieber album pic.twitter.com/RCxCoOWCrY
— greta gerNIG (@NILES100) March 19, 2021
Am I hearing this wrong, or does Justin Bieber's cringey, tone deaf MLK interlude cut off (jarringly) right before the end of the word "justice" so it sounds almost like MLK says "you died when you refused to stand up for *Justin*?? Bruh.
— Josh Kimelman (@1eyed_ear) March 19, 2021
Although Twitter had their own opinions on the use of MLK’s audio, Bieber got clearance for the clips by the MLK Estate. On top of that Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter Bernice King says that she loves how they were used on the album. She tweeted thanking Justin for his support in a quote tweet response of Justin’s tweet, where he states the organizations he will support in honor of the release of the Justice album.
Each of us, including artists and entertainers, can do something.
— Be A King (@BerniceKing) March 18, 2021
Thank you, @justinbieber, for your support, in honor of #Justice, of @TheKingCenter’s work and of our #BeLove campaign, which is a part of our global movement for justice. #MLK #EndRacism https://t.co/nTkR1XdcvW
