Stevie Wonder has publicly chastised Lil Wayne for rapping about assassinated African-American teenager Emmett Till in a leaked song.

The Lollipop star hit headlines this week (beg11Feb12) when an unauthorised remix of Karate Chop, his collaboration with rapper Future, was leaked online.

The song featured a crude reference to 14-year-old Till, who was beaten and shot to death in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, and prompted bosses at Epic Records to issue an apology and vow to remove the track from the web.

Now Wonder has waded into the debate and criticised Wayne for failing to take the Till tragedy seriously.

He tells the Associated Press, "You just cannot do that... I think you got to have someone around you that - even if they are the same age or older - is wiser to say, 'Yo, that's not happening. Don't do that'... Sometimes people have to put themselves in the place of people who they are talking about. Imagine if that happened to your mother, brother, daughter or your son. How would you feel? Have some discernment before we say certain things. That goes for me or any other writer."