Riz Ahmed, the overachiever of the year, with two Emmy nominations under his belt, is courting news for all the right reasons. While the actor is a possible contender for the role of Venom in the Spider-Man universe, the bigger story surrounding Ahmed is how he responded to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Riz Ahmed, the overachiever of the year, with two Emmy nominations under his belt, is courting news for all the right reasons. While the actor is a possible contender for the role of Venom in the Spider-Man universe, the bigger story surrounding Ahmed is how he responded to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Taking the stage during The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Ahmed performed a spoken word poem on extremism, adapted from a song he first wrote a decade ago.
“Every year I keep hoping it will become irrelevant, but it keeps becoming more and more relevant sadly,” Ahmed stated. “It’s my attempt to get behind the headlines and work out where all this extremism is coming from.”
Titled ‘Sour Times’, the song begins with Ahmed saying the lyrics: “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.”
Changing up the original lyrics, he added, “The truth is, terrorism ain’t what you think it is/ There ain’t no supervillain planning these attacks from some base/ The truth is so much scarier and harder to face/ See, there’s thousands of angry young men that are lost/ Sidelined in the economy, a marginal cost/ They think there’s no point in putting ballots up in the box/ They got no place in the system and no faith in its cause... The way that Trump talks, gives a lost boy a cause.”
