J. Cole sends powerful message with “Crooked Smile video

J. Cole used his latest video to send a message to law enforcement in the war against drugs with the help of videographer Sheldon Candis. 
Cole’s video for “Crooked Smile” from his album Born Sinner, was dedicated to Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a 7-year-old girl killed in 2010 by police officer Joseph Weekley in Detroit.
According to Cbsnews.com, Weekley was leading police officers in a raid on Stanley-Jones’ home to find a murder suspect. 
Weekley accidentally fired his weapon, resulting in the unfortunate death of the young girl.  A&E’s show “The First 48” recorded the raid for the reality show, which led Stanley-Jones’ family to believe that the officers cared more about their television appearance than properly carrying out the raid. 
The video portrays Cole as a young man cleaning his house, cutting his grass and preparing a birthday cake and barbeque pit.
 On the other side, the short film shows life from the lead DEA agent’s standpoint; sitting at the table, eating breakfast and talking to his young daughter. 
Showing the perspective from both parties, Cole is shown stuffing his sneakers with marijuana while the lead DEA agent is shown preparing for the raid on Cole’s home.
Moments later, Cole’s mother and father arrives to his home and his daughter runs to Cole’s arms in excitement. 
While they play with sparklers and sing happy birthday, the lead DEA agent gives a last minute brief as the agents ride off to Cole’s home.
Once the agents arrive, they bust into the house and apprehend Cole while his daughter was asleep and she gets up to investigate the ruckus in the house.
 As the lead DEA agent is arresting Cole, one of his agents comes around the corner and accidentally shoots the little girl. 
The video ends showing the lead DEA agent thinking of how his daughter and Cole’s daughter could have been friends, as her body is carried out of Cole’s home. 
Lastly, a message flashes across the screen that reads “For Aiyana Stanley-Jones”, “Please reconsider your war on drugs.”
Although Cole’s video follows a storyline that is different from Aiyana Stanley-Jones’, it shows that the same situation can happen in a scenario. 
Because most entertainers film their video to match the lyrics, some people didn’t get the complete jest of the visuals for the song.
Zykia Stewart, a sophomore Accounting major from Gulfport, MS said she understood where Cole was coming from.
“I thought the video was weird because of what he showed.  The video didn’t portray what people thought it would, but it had a bigger message and people probably not going to look too much into it because of what was portrayed.  It was like a message inside of a message,” said Stewart.
Gerian Lane, a freshman Music Education major from New Orleans said that Cole hit on a touchy subject with the video.
“The video was creative, it was definitely something different than what people in the industry are putting out.  I really liked it because I like different stuff. The war on drugs is a controversial topic in my eyes because first, there should be a clear and concise definition on what a drug is. 
Right now, with the few states who have legalized marijuana and those who haven’t, I feel like there still isn’t a clear definition of what a drug actually is, so I feel like they need to clarify that first before they affirm a war on drugs,” Lane said.
Cole’s video sent out two different, but both powerful messages:  the first is to encourage people to stay true to who they are. 
In the song, Cole says “They tell me I should fix my grill cause I got money now; I ain’t gon’ sit around and front like I ain’t thought about it; A perfect smile is more appealing but it’s funny how; my ish is crooked look at how far I done got without it; I keep my twisted grill, just to show the kids it’s real; We ain’t picture perfect but we worth the picture still.”
J. Cole sends out the message to encourage people to be who you are, while sending an important message to law enforcement, asking them to reconsider their war on drugs by showing how their careless actions could endanger the lives of the in