Purify Me

Quincy Davis and Talilo Marfil are Portland-based rappers and community educators who released a music video, Purify Me, as part of the global day of hip-hop solidarity with Flint, Michigan. On Saturday March 19th, #HipHop4Flint unites a network of 45+ cities to raise funds to purchase water filters for residents who have been suffering from toxic water in the city's current state of emergency.

The project was inspired when when Quincy was invited to contribute a track on the #HipHop4flint mixtape. While doing research for his lyrics, Quincy discovered that Nestlé corporation has been attempting to set up shop in Oregon to bottle over 100 million gallons of fresh water a year from Oxbow Spring, a publicly-owned water source in the Columbia River Gorge. If approved, this would be the first time that a state agency would give away publicly owned water to a corporation to profit from. 

Inspired to take an urgent call to action, Quincy and Talilo recorded the song and shot the video without a budget in a 2 week period.

Quincy stated, “Living in the northwest, we are very fortunate to have access to clean water and this project has given me a wake-up call to think about how to ensure our children will have clean water and necessities to survive in the future. I hope that this music video can inspire us to think about community-based solutions, and to unify, as clean water is a necessity for all of us as human beings.”