Actor Omari Hardwick, who references the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his new song “Bloodshed,” says the martyred civil rights leader would be “a little baffled” at the amount of killing happening today, especially at supposed safe havens like Ft. Lauderdale airport.

“As much as Dr. King would feel a level of hope, there’s a side of him that would be extremely upset,” Hardwick said recently in Harlem, N.Y. while theorizing on how King would’ve received today’s political climate. “I think he would voice [his displeasure] in a very boisterous and loud manner.”

Reciting the words to his upcoming single, Hardwick said, “‘No more bloodshed, no more bloodshed.” He continued, “It’s really about it being too much bloodshed on this earth.”

While violence happening in the world inspired him in part to write the song, Hardwick unfortunately has been through enough tragedy to draw from first-hand experience.

“For a long time I had been very secretive about a lot of the things I’d been through personally, and a lot of that is purposeful; my fan base for the large part is the younger generation,” Hardwick told VIBE earlier this month. “They’re like, ‘I want to know everything! I want to know it all!’ I don’t add to it as much as I could by letting certain things be known and those things are everything from having lost a son during the same time my father was shot six times, which was only a year and maybe 10 months after my brother was shot 10 times. Within two years of that, father survived, son did not, brother did not. My cousin, who was 33 years old after fighting a seven-year battle with brain cancer, passed on. There’s a lot and I don’t really know how to mourn that well, so perhaps I do it through art.”

Hardwick’s upcoming LP Later Decatur is set to be released in April and feature Power co-stars 50 Cent and Rotimi. Josiah Bell sings the hook on “Bloodshed.”