Now, Lee is asking viewers to do the same thing. Each song in Da 5 Bloods becomes more than a song, but a message to those listening, if they choose to hear it: history repeats itself. The songs not only tell the story of the Vietnam War, but how it affected Black men and women disproportionately to white men and women. The messages sung by Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and Freda Payne are not all that different than the ones we are hearing in the protests across the world following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer.