At the iHeartRadio Music awards, the rapper castigated gun lobbyists, saying ‘they love their guns more than our children’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Eminem has continued his run of politically charged performances with an attack on the National Rifle Association during a set at the iHeartRadio Music awards in Inglewood, California.

Adding a new freestyle verse to his song Nowhere Fast, he rapped:

This whole country is going nuts, and the NRA is in our way They’re responsible for this whole production They hold the strings, they control the puppet And they threaten to take donor bucks So they know the government won’t do nothing and no one’s budging Gun owners clutching their loaded weapons They love their guns more than our children

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The performance was introduced by Alex Moscou, one of the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead. He said he and his fellow students were “tired of hearing politicians sending their thoughts and prayers to us, and doing nothing to make the necessary changes to prevent this tragedy from happening again”.

Eminem’s attack on the NRA comes after fellow rapper Common criticised them during a performance of Say Something at this year’s Academy Awards, saying: “Tell the NRA they in God’s way.”

The barely veiled reference to “puppet” Donald Trump is another of Eminem’s recent attacks on the president, both in performances of his awards-show freestyles Campaign Speech and The Storm, and in a Vulture interview in which he said Trump “makes my blood boil ... I want our country to be great, too, I want it to be the best it can be, but it’s not going to be that with him in charge”.