“How can you take a song that’s about hope and turn it into hatred?”

Kendrick Lamar has issued a response to claims from Fox News that his performance at last weekend’s BET Awards “incites violence.”

Fox News pundit Geraldo Rivera criticised Kendrick’s calling out of police brutality, describing his lyrics as “not helpful at all” and making the absurd claim that “hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.”

Lamar has today issued a response to the statements from Fox News. “How can you take a song that’s about hope and turn it into hatred?,” he asked. “The message, the overall message, is we gonna be all right. It’s not the message, we gonna kill people.”

“This is our music,” he later added. “This is us expressing ourselves. Rather [than] going out here and doing the murders myself, I want to express myself in a positive light the same way other artists are doing. Not going out in the streets, go in the booth and talking about the situation and hoping these kids can find some type of influence on it in a positive manner. Coming from these streets and coming from these neighborhoods, we’re taking our talents and putting ’em inside the studio.”

Watch the full interview below. [via TMZ]