Your chance to star in music video that says ‘enough is enough’ to street violence

MC Flamezee writes and performs gritty, political songs about east London. PICTURE: Moss Media Archant

An grime artist has put a call out for people from Barking and Dagenham to star in his latest music video this weekend.

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Reece Blackman in the recording studio. PICTURE: Moss Media Reece Blackman in the recording studio. PICTURE: Moss Media

Reece Blackman, 28, has been making music as MC Flamezee for 14 years and is using his latest track, Enough is Enough to condemn the violence taking place on the borough’s streets and reported in these pages.

Reece, who grew up Dagenham’s Canonsleigh Road, wrote and raps powerful lines such as “I murder beats / My heart bleeds for these innocent Lives that died by the knife / Now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel / Man that ain’t right”.

Now he wants the community to come together to make an anti-violence video that looks like news footage: “The idea is I want to get as many people as I can together with billboards and banners with people’s own words, like “no guns” on them.

“I want to film the video like a protest, so I will be amongst everyone,” he explained. “We will have the drones out looking down on the protest like news footage.”

The rapper is shooting the video at a secret location in Romford on Sunday, and is urging people to get in touch with him and come down for the shoot.

“Everyone’s welcome,” Reece urged. “I’d have pensioners, teenagers, adults, kids, everyone.

“There’s a lot of people that don’t agree with violence and it would be great to get together and make a day of it.”

His cry of “enough is enough” is very different to the stereotype of the “gangster rapper” making music about drugs and guns – something that he claims is largely a fantasy: “You get a lot of artists that sing about it but they don’t live like that.”

“They are not that sort of people.

“I’m not talking about them – I’m talking about the people who are walking on the street who are carrying knives or guns and are willing to kill someone.”

“I think you’re an idiot if you carry a knife or a gun and I would never socialise with someone who carried a knife or a gun. You need to put them down, that’s all I can say.”

To get involved in the video contact @MCflamezee on Snapchat, Twitter or Instagram, or email Keepingitgrime@gmail.com

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