David Banner Talks Symbolism of Trees & Black Heritage in Powerful 'Magnolia' Video

Rapper, actor, producer, hitmaker: David Banner has done it all. The 44-year-old dropped The God Box—his first studio album in seven years—in 2017 and immediately received high praise for the powerful, CeeLo Green-assisted single, "Magnolia." Taking Fuse inside the song's eye-opening visual, Banner explained the concept behind its production and why the process was so challenging.

"I had an idea for a book that was called If Trees Could Talk—what they would say that they've seen happen to black people throughout history," the Mississippi native explains. "It's like the tree was feeling bad about all the things that she had saw and, to a certain degree, she was a part of. She said, 'I was used in the lynching of blacks.'"