“Punch (TDE) told me I should drop it when Mike Brown died. Sadly I told him, “this issue will always be relevant.”

Jay Z has responded to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police this week with a new track. ‘Spiritual’ was posted on the rapper’s streaming platform Tidal last night (July 7) accompanied by a note expressing his sadness and disappointment in “THIS America – we should be further along. WE ARE NOT.”

“I trust God and know everything that happens is for our greatest good, but man… it’s tough right now,” the note continues. The track is apparently an unfinished song Hova has been working on for years, that was almost released in the wake of Ferguson teen Mike Brown’s death in 2014. Hear the track and read Jay’s note in full below.

The track follows a statement from Jay Z’s wife Beyoncé, who last night staged a minute silence at the latest date of her Formation tour and released an open letter about racially-motivated violence in America.“We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our communities. It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us’,” she wrote on her website asking for an end to the “war on people of color and minorities”.

Protests over the separate police shootings of Sterling and Castile continued last night, escalating in Dallas, where five policemen were shot dead and at least six others wounded. The gunman has reportedly turned himself in.