How much street cred is too much?

For executives at Mountain Dew, that may have been the question of the day on Monday, as the brand looked to move beyond a public relations embarrassment that had led it to end a multi-million-dollar endorsement deal with the rapper Lil Wayne. The brand severed its ties because of pressure brought by the family of Emmett Till, the African-American teenager whose 1955 torture and murder in Mississippi for supposedly whistling at a white woman helped foment the civil rights movement.

The family took issue with vulgar lyrics referring to Till that were performed by Lil Wayne on a remix of “Karate Chop,” by the rapper Future. In an interview with the Web site AllHipHop.com in April, the family said it would put pressure on the brand, which is part of the PepsiCo Americas Beverages division of PepsiCo, to drop the artist; Mountain Dew did so on Friday.

Sarah Cunningham, a publicist for Lil Wayne, attributed the split to what she called “creative differences” between the artist and the brand and described it as “an amicable parting.” A representative for Mountain Dew declined to answer specific questions about the Lil Wayne situation, but said in a statement: “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.”

Pressure on Lil Wayne began building in February when the Till family issued an open letter in which Airickca Gordon-Taylor, a family representative, wrote in a letter to him that “when you spit lyrics” like these, “not only are you destroying the preservation and legacy of Emmett Till’s memory and name, but the impact of his murder in black history along with degradation of women.”