12-Year-Old Keedron Bryant Tells Hoda Kotb the Real Story Behind "I Just Want to Live" Song
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Keedron Bryant, a 12-year-old gospel singer, went viral last week after performing a protest song in response to the police killing of George Floyd. On Monday, Bryant and his mom Johnetta spoke on the Today Show from their Florida home about the inspiration and heartbreak behind the emotional song, titled “I Just Want to Live.”
After watching the brutal murder of another Black man at the hands of white police, the mother-son duo decided to send a callout to justice through song — with lyrics they hope will inspire people to to fight racism. The song, penned by Johnetta and sung gorgeously by young Keedron, has since been shared widely across social (and by some very big names, to boot).
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“What made you put those words on paper?” Hoda Kotb asks the mother-son pair on her show.
“When I heard Mr. Floyd call out for his mom, as a Black mother, that really hit me in a deep way,” Johnetta tells Today. “I went into prayer … and God gave these words to me.”
Johnetta told Kotb that she wanted to give her son wisdom in order to help him “be able to live and be confident in this world.”
Once she wrote the song down, she told her son to go upstairs and pray over the words during his “devotion time,” which Johnetta told Kotb is already part of Keedron’s homeschooling schedule. Keedron came back and told his mom: “I’m ready.”
“I’m sad that I have to sing that,” Keedron tells Kotb. “It’s unfair that we can’t go out and enjoy life and not be afraid and fear that something is going to happen to us.”
The brave preteen added that his goal is to impact people on the other side of their screens. After watching his performance — and the reactions on Instagram from the likes of Barack Obama and LeBron James — there’s no denying he’s having a greater impact than he ever anticipated.
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