When I was getting jacked up, my brother was getting jacked up and friends of mine were getting jacked up by the police department, there was no witness to it. And it was only because of the grace of God and having cellphone cameras. But this time, everybody had to sit right there and watch this man’s life get snuffed out. Normally, if something like this happens, not many people see it, so eventually it kind of goes right on by you. And it was just a good thing like, Scotty said that everybody was home at the time that this happened. I have been a victim of police brutality, my brother has, so this isn’t nothing new, but like Scotty said, it was so important for us to do this.
Leaveil Degree: All of us have been victims of it. So, when we heard the lyrics to this song, which was originally written back in 1983 by our bass player, the guy in our band, and when he sent it to me and I heard the words, I got with Leaveil and my brother and said, “We gotta record this right away.” I can’t think of a word more important than “important” for how important a song like this is right now. We’ve done run out of names, and black people do die, who have given their lives for this. We have been singing for 54 years and we’re still dealing with this. “How Long” was basically asking the question, “How long have we gotta go through this crap?” Us being mistreated, police going crazy on black people, and you know how it goes. We go back to 1965, we had another record called, “Seems Like I Gotta Do Wrong Before They Notice Me,” dealing with the same subject matter. And like you said, man, we’re old enough to-this is not the first time we’ve seen black people being mistreated this way. That made everything much more important. And like everybody else, we were at home looking at television, and we saw what happened with George Floyd. We were in the midst of doing another Whispers record. Once we saw the knee in George Floyd’s neck, we knew we had to come with it. Scotty Scott: I’m so glad you said Marvin Gaye’s “What Going On,” because when I first heard this record, that’s the first thing that popped in my mind. Zenger: When I think about the premise of “How Long,” nearly 50 years ago, Marvin Gaye released, “What’s Going On.” Unfortunately, the same rhetorical question that was asked in 1971 holds true with your record in 2020.
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