![Bas Echoes J. Cole's Complaint About Taxes: '[We're] Just Funding Death & Destruction'](https://app.hiphopdx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/bas-echoes-j-cole-complaint-about-taxes.jpg?w=1200)
J. Cole isn’t the only Dreamville member with concerns about where his tax dollars are going; now Bas has joined him with a different, though related, list of concerns.
The Too High to Riot rapper backed up his label compatriot, who complained about tax dollars being used for weapons on his 2018 track “Brackets,” with a social media post on Thursday (January 11).
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Coming on the day that the White House announced overseas military strikes and just two days after the Biden administration did an end run around Congress to send more than $100 million worth of tank ammunition to Israel for its war in Gaza, Bas’ statement expressed frustration at U.S. foreign policy, which he said was “actively creating a generation of [so-called] ‘terrorists'” by “slaughter[ing] innocents worldwide in the name of western imperialism.”
“I used to feel some level of accomplishment when I paid my taxes. Adulting 101. A contributing member of society. In reality I’m just funding death, destruction, and imperialism,” he wrote.
Bas admitted that the fault didn’t only lay on politicians.
“We are complicit for failing to apply any type of pressure on our elected officials,” he continued. “Yet here I am, addicted to the dollar.”
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“Let me collect my coins and smoke the harsh realities away,” he concluded. “this shit is fuckin wack man.”
You can see the full statement below.
Bas has dealt with international issues in his music as well. His most recent album We Only Talk About Real Shit When We’re Fucked Up contains a song, “Khartoum,” about the ongoing war in Sudan.
“Bas makes a national tragedy personal, rapping: “Five days trackin’ through the desert, cuzzo swore his misery/ Auntie made it three days ‘fore she passed, he spoke it through his tears to me,” wrote HipHopDX‘s Alec Siegel in a review of the record.
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The project features guest contributions from Cole, A$AP Ferg, FKJ, Amaarae, AJ Tracey, Sha Sha, Blxckie and Adekunle Gold.
