June 12
Link

Ashanti's blood-splattered videos for her single, "The Way That I Love You," sparked a protest earlier this week in Los Angeles calling Universal Records to remove the clips from the Internet.

Led by civil-rights organization Project Islamic Hope and its leader Najee Ali, more than two dozen parents and religious leaders gathered outside the west coast Universal/Motown offices on Tuesday (June 10) to voice their displeasure with the videos.

The clip features a scorned lover, played by Ashanti, who gets revenge on her cheating boyfriend by stabbing him to death. A murder scene with the boyfriend's body in a tub and a bloody knife are among the images featured in it.

A separate promotional video includes a fake news reports about a killing spree allegedly inspired by Ashanti's love crime, as well as bloody walls with the words "black children will die" smeared on them. Prior to the protest it, the promo video was viewable on TheWayThatILoveYou.com, but the site has since been removed.

The site allowed visitors to send customized versions of the promotional video called "gotchagrams," with options to input a friend's name, their "crime" and "weapon of choice."


"Following discussions with Ashanti, we have jointly decided to remove the TheWayThatILoveYou.com website that hosts the Gotchagram," reads a statement from Universal. "Ashanti and her music have always been about self-empowerment and addressing the issues that are most meaningful to her. We stand by our artist and her creative choices."

"The Way That I Love You" is the first single from her new album "The Declaration," which debuts this week at No. 6 on The Billboard 200, moving 86K units.

Wow. Thats ridiculous. Its a video...with a story. What's the big deal?
Are people's priorities THAT mixed up?

Scary!
Kind of sends the wrong messages.

guess she'll get a couple of extra sales,

Sounds bloody disturbing.

Cinnie said:

I guess it does.

Cinnie said:

I wish I'd have though of that

ToraToraDreams said:

Guess we weren't witty enough today...

Dont people have lives anymore? To actually sit down and write a letter about an Ashanti video and complain about it? The scary thing is that artists actually cave on these issues or give apologies, we all remember Beyonce's re-edit of her video, and Mariah did a re-edit of her "say somthing" video because people complained it was too fast in the eidts, give me a fucking break.

Coming soon... "Ashanti's fascination with death..."


I think the idea was dumb, and making an interactive deal ...

"black children will die?" Anyone old enough to recall the series of murders of black children in Atlanta in the early 1980s?

Sounds like someone was trying to create controversy.

ToraToraDreams said:

For real though although i am not an ashanti fan
she takes unwarrented criticism for no reason. She is
actually a nice girl that happens to be your typical
artist these days that don't have a good voice but i
have heard far worse than ashanti.

ThreadBare said:

ThreadBare said:

I know of this case through Rick James' live gig in Long Beach featured in the deluxe edition of 'Street Songs'.
He wants to get the people clapping, so first he tells them to imagine one of their hands as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and then tells the audience to 'beat the shit out of it'.
Then he tells the audience to imagine of one of their hands as the "sucka who's killing all the black children in Atlanta", and again tells them to beat the shit out of it.

If no one's into public Satan worshiping anymore, Ashanti might as well do it.

phunkdaddy said:

well she does have an annoying laugh

bboy87 said:

omg i used to live for hatin on her i hated her laugh and the way she talked i wanted to slap her in the head with a old sock.

Ashanti is sooooo 2002 Do people even still buy her CDs?!

Ashant's bloody 'singing' should spark protests, from music lovers the world over.

FuNkeNsteiN said:

Yeah, it was a horrible thing.

FuNkeNsteiN said:

And I know of this because of Prince´s lyrics in Annie Christian.

This story seems incomplete. I thought the whole protest was because she did an inclusion on the website for the song where the object is to find a creative way to kill a cheatinglover? You would then insert a person's name and your weapon of choice and send that person a cybergram. I mean, that is kinda rude. With cyber-bullying being what it is nowadays, it's not too cool to me that younger kids could have access to these and use them to target each other. I also think in the case of adults being in stalker situations it wouldn't be that cute of a thing to receive either. The video? Ok, I've seen worse, or even more controversial. But the website definitely made some reckless missteps with the murder cybergram.

FuNkeNsteiN said:

Well I know of this case because i was a scared little black boy seing this on the news every couple of weeks when they found another kid and because we were wearing little yellow ribbons for the kids that were being murdered in ATL

When Madonna got stabbed and she smeared blood on the walls in Die Another Day nobody said nothin

Christopher said:

She has a very hard laugh

it's got bass like "HARHARHARHAR"

she was tryin to look "down" when she first came out

makes me wanna hit her in the face with a bag of oranges

JackieBlue said:

I guess!

Although, when I'm at my desk I listen to US r&b stations online, and I SWEAR they play that song on the hour, every hour. When I sleep at night listening to slow jam/Quiet Storm programming from the US, they play it at least ONCE in the 5 hour frame, and I'll be damned if that song doesn't always wake me up and make me want to go grab something from the fridge or go to the bathroom on cue . What I don't understand, is that with so MUCH airplay, how is it that her unit sale numbers are so low . It seems like the way coporate owned radio is set up these days with ramming certain songs down our throats she would have been a shoo-in for a selling butt-load of cds. Especially now that Beyonce went and sat down somewhere for a minute

Ottensen said:[quote]

JackieBlue said:

You, know R&B stations only have a 10-song rotation and if they dare venture outside of their regular playlist it's for an oldie. The only reason Ashanti has slipped into the format so heavily is because Bey finally took a moment to breathe.

ThreadBare said:

Indeed