Riz MC Delivers Spoken Word Performance of 'Sour Times' on ‘ Jimmy Fallon’

Following the protests and the subsequent violence that marked Charlottesville, Va. this past weekend, actor/rapper Riz MC stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday night (Aug. 14). Naturally, the conversation eventually turned to the Charlottesville protest, which was composed of and facilitated by white supremacists, and Ahmed used the discussion as an opportunity to turn in a spoken word rendition of his song, "Sour Times." Check out his stirring performance below.

Just before jumping into his performance, Ahmed laments that his poem, which he wrote years ago, hasn't lost any of its relevancy.

“I wrote this piece ten years ago, and every year, I keep hoping it’ll become irrelevant, but it seems to become more and more relevant, sadly,” he tells Fallon. “It’s my attempt to get behind the headlines and work out where all this extremism is coming from.”

"In these sour times/Please allow me to vouch for mine/Bitter taste in my mouth, spit it out with a rhyme/I'm losing my religion to tomorrow's headlines," Riz spouts during the performance.

On the whole, "Sour Times," which is a track that appeared on Ahmed's 2011 album MICroscope, is a piece that looks to contextualize the way terrorism has evolved and the way motives are simplified by the mainstream looking for a "supervillain." Many people believe perceived xenophobic rhetoric has been accepted and enabled by folks who attended the Charlottesville protests, which might be the correlation Ahmed sees between then and now.

Check out his spoken word performance below. Also, be sure to peep Ahmed's appearance in the music video for Lin-Manuel Miranda's “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)," a track from the soundtrack to the Hamilton Mixtape.

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