Rapper Juelz Santana is defending a lyric he uses on a forthcoming Diplomats album that seems to pay tribute to September 11 highjacker Omar Atta. The lyric in questions, from a track called ‘I Love You’, runs: "I worship the prophet, The great Mohammed Omar Atta, For his courage behind the wheel of the plane, Reminds me when I was dealin' the 'caine."
Speaking to NME.com he defended the line by saying he simply admires the courage of Atta. "I feel my Diplomats are my team and I'm going to do whatever it takes for them, for my people, the same way as he did for his people. Not that I support him or what he did, but in order for him to do that, it had to take courage and love for what he believed in. A lot of New York people don't have that. Maybe if they did, something like that wouldn't happen. I never said I worshipped him, I said I worshipped his courage. It had nothing to do with 9/11 or me supporting them because I know people in the towers too. If you really listen to the song it was talking about that and the whole situation” He added that as the first anniversary of the terrorist strikes approaches, people should not be focusing on his lyric, but asking why the attacks happened at all.
The album containing the track is due for a December release, and Santana doesn’t feel it will damage his career too much: "If Eminem can get away with the things he does, then I can get away with what I do. And to be honest, I really don't think I did anything wrong. It’s not like I'm coming out speaking out all the time about the Taliban. What I do is music - it's words coming out of my mouth. That was one sentence, you understand."