Los Angeles - Alicia Keys has claimed that "gangsta rap" was created as a government ploy to get black people to kill one another.

In an interview with music magazine Blender, The Fallin' singer said that the musical genre was used to perpetuate negative stereotypes of black people.

"Gangsta rap was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other," she was quoted as saying. Asked who the ploy was invented by, she told the magazine: "the government."

She also alleged that the government was behind the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG "to stop another great black leader from existing" and revealed that she had taken to reading books by the leaders of the revolutionary Black Panther Party. (dpa)