“I record when I have something to say,” Vince Staples told Pitchfork last month, and with respect to his forthcoming Def Jam debut, Hell Can Wait, he’s a man of his word. Unlike his last track, “Blue Suede,” which dealt abstractly with the unsavory, unexpected realities of street life and its warped priorities—“All I wanted was the Jordans with the blue suede in ’em,” Staples repeats on that song—his new one, “Hands Up,” addresses a far more fucked up state of a nation. “North Division tryin’ to stop my Blackness/I’m watchin’ for them badges when out in traffic,” he begins, before mentioning, by name, DeAngelo Lopez and Tyler Woods, two L.A. area men killed by police last year.

But it’s the people Staples doesn’t mention specifically—Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Anthony Bruno, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin—that spring to mind. And “Hands Up” is his prepared statement: “Shoot him first without a warning/And they expect respect and nonviolence/I refuse the right to be silent.” Even with the deafening chaos of the media, a non-ending barrage of opinions ranging from intelligent to soul-crushing and new news spilling in every day that just seems worse and worse, Staples’ voice is easy to pick out above the noise.