Speaker 1: You're listening, waiting on reparations a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio two Head of Rose, wet together, the wet in
Speaker 1: genital central to which the pleasure parenthood is parenthetical to
Speaker 1: your periods missing, and it's being missing gets conspicuous. You're
Speaker 1: pissing on a stick and ship shit, shit, Okay, what
Speaker 1: the issue wins? A pincher feed'll tissue. It's an utter,
Speaker 1: it's a parent site, it's an honor, it's gotten. You're terrified.
Speaker 1: It's a daughter, but she's got to go that could
Speaker 1: you spared life? Could you prepare her right if you tried?
Speaker 1: Are you the parents type prepared to fight for the
Speaker 1: writer's choice? And yeah, embarrassed by the choice if it's
Speaker 1: just a parasite. Why your eyes all boys? Because it's
Speaker 1: difficult to call the child the choice when a tiny
Speaker 1: boys inside you was crying out that it's your bright
Speaker 1: and joy is nobody tells you you conceive it, you
Speaker 1: could grieve it because I always see is the stigmatization
Speaker 1: of a procedure, feeding off this information and trait and
Speaker 1: conversation for secrets. I am dope knife franca, So how's
Speaker 1: everybody doing? I don't know why I keep sucking, asking
Speaker 1: how everybody's doing out there. I want to know. I
Speaker 1: keep thinking, I keep thinking that we're alive. I misperforming anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it is a little bit after eleven and in
Speaker 1: a little under an hour is going to be Lingua
Speaker 1: Franca's birthday. If I sound really excited, you feeling you're
Speaker 1: feeling good there about that. It's funny because I was
Speaker 1: talking to my family today and they were talking about
Speaker 1: next year the Big three, oh for me, and so
Speaker 1: how we're gonna all get together once hopefully coronavirus is
Speaker 1: behind us, and it's like the last big birthday milestone
Speaker 1: I have tilling forty. I mean after that, then it's
Speaker 1: I think it's it's best to start celebrating it in
Speaker 1: five years and rules after that, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I don't know what is going to occur politically between
Speaker 1: when we're recording this Monday night and on Thursday, when
Speaker 1: you guys hear this. I have some predictions, you have
Speaker 1: some predictions. This is this is in a way, this
Speaker 1: is similar to our very very first episode, The Emergency,
Speaker 1: because something happened on the fly that we felt, hey,
Speaker 1: we we took a break, so we could work on
Speaker 1: some new episodes, and then something else happened that we
Speaker 1: kind of felt we had to address. But before we
Speaker 1: get into all that, Mariah, won't you tell everybody about
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing this past weekend. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: on Saturday, I drove down to us of the Georgia.
Speaker 1: It's about three and a half hours from here to
Speaker 1: the Irwin County Detention Center where a group called SOMMO
Speaker 1: South Georgia reporting it together a protest in support of
Speaker 1: the folks being held there as well as the women
Speaker 1: who um, it was revealed, have been given for sister
Speaker 1: actomy is at the center there. And so there were
Speaker 1: folks who came out from all over there. I met, um,
Speaker 1: some folks from Florida, folks from Atlanta representing Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a hundred people came through. Yeah, I met a
Speaker 1: girl who drove down from Indiana. So folks came from
Speaker 1: all over and we had like a caravan's last march. Um.
Speaker 1: They wanted us at the first to all just be
Speaker 1: in like a car caravan, like honking, to let the
Speaker 1: t dannies inside know that we were outside. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all dirty with them, partially because there was like
Speaker 1: an armed fascist presence. I was just about to say
Speaker 1: it was there was there police presence, heavy police presence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cop cars everywhere everywhere everywhere, UM, as well as like
Speaker 1: some like armed got some pickup trucks with like Trump
Speaker 1: flags hanging. Yeah. And so thankfully we didn't have much
Speaker 1: interaction with the cops or with the UM the fascists.
Speaker 1: There was like a small altercation, but I wasn't really
Speaker 1: UM there for that. I just saw some video online afterwards.
Speaker 1: But it was really cool, mostly because UM the speakers
Speaker 1: that we you know, afterwards gathered and heard from some
Speaker 1: folks from throughout South Georgia and the intersectionality of the
Speaker 1: struggles related to UM, you know, ice and like the
Speaker 1: president industrial complex and like women's bodily autonomy, especially with
Speaker 1: the passage of the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Um
Speaker 1: the night before thinking about UM, the pro life movement
Speaker 1: and like it's silence around, like what what's been happening
Speaker 1: down in Irwin County Attention Center, Because we had folks
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that they UM had seen this
Speaker 1: this doctor before, have been treated by him, and he
Speaker 1: had actually like recommended his directors for folks who wanted
Speaker 1: to have children, and so like the way that we
Speaker 1: can see of our roman's right to choose as kind
Speaker 1: of unidirectional, like we think about the right to an abortion,
Speaker 1: but also how important it is to enable folks to
Speaker 1: have kids if they wanted to have like the economic
Speaker 1: conditions in their lives and the healthcare options available to
Speaker 1: them in their lives to like have kids if they wanted,
Speaker 1: and like that that autonomy is is bi directional, like
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's your right to do whatever you want. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we heard from folks representing like Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: who was like highlighting they had speakers, yeah, who were
Speaker 1: um talking about how many uh, you know, black detainees
Speaker 1: there are. We think of it as a struggle that
Speaker 1: is faced by folks from you know, South America and
Speaker 1: Central America and Mexico, but like actually a lot of
Speaker 1: data detainee is our Haitian or Cameroonian or you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of places, and so you know, black
Speaker 1: immigrant lives matter too, um. And so yeah, it was
Speaker 1: really exhilarating, uplifting, um, even though I kind of departed wishing,
Speaker 1: like protests, we gotta do what we can. We gotta
Speaker 1: be back here in the streets. But like, you know,
Speaker 1: we drove away, and those detainees are still behind those walls,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're still still there tonight. We're still
Speaker 1: there tonight. And yeah, that kind of like haunted means
Speaker 1: staying with me. And so I'm kind of glad we're
Speaker 1: talking about Roe v. Wade today with like some of
Speaker 1: those messages lingering after that protest, of like hearing from
Speaker 1: folks talk about their experiences with the reproductive healthcare reproductive
Speaker 1: rights um and remembering how all these struggles are intertwined.
Speaker 1: So with the sudden passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Speaker 1: Bader Ginsburg over the weekend, it just felt particularly timely
Speaker 1: to talk about the subject of abortion and Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 1: the struggle for women's bodily autonomy and what hip hop
Speaker 1: is that to say about the topic over the years.
Speaker 1: So let's get into a little history about this epic
Speaker 1: landmarks Supreme Court ruling back in nineteen seventy three. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixte twenty two year old Texas resident Norman
Speaker 1: mccorby became pregnant with their third child. She decided two
Speaker 1: kids was enough, but in Texas, at the time, abortion
Speaker 1: was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life
Speaker 1: and some m Corby, or Jane Roe, as she was
Speaker 1: known in the courts of the media, got a lawsuit
Speaker 1: in federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade,
Speaker 1: claiming that the law banning most abortions in Texas was unconstitutional. Now, first,
Speaker 1: the U. S. District Court of the Northern District of
Speaker 1: Texas ruled in her favor, but the Supreme Court of
Speaker 1: Texas appealed this directly to the Supreme Court, who would
Speaker 1: go on to hear the Roe v. Wade case. So
Speaker 1: in January of nineteen seventy three, the Supreme Court ruled
Speaker 1: seven to two that the you process clause of the
Speaker 1: fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the right of privacy,
Speaker 1: also protects a pregnant person's right to choose to have
Speaker 1: an abortion or not, which struck down many state and
Speaker 1: federal abortion laws. Of note, the author of the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court world view Wade opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun. Blackmun, I
Speaker 1: think so yeah. Well, he was a Nixon appointee, and
Speaker 1: he was joined by two of the other three Knicks
Speaker 1: and appointees at the time so there was a point
Speaker 1: in time in which Rob Wade enjoyed bipartisan support de
Speaker 1: facto by the you know, by right of their appointee,
Speaker 1: their appointment to the Court by Nixon. So they're not
Speaker 1: even doing it for necessarily ideological reasons, but because yeah.
Speaker 1: So Granted, this did not strike down all state restrictions
Speaker 1: on abortion. Indeed, the court ruled that these mights must
Speaker 1: be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health
Speaker 1: and protecting prenatal life, a balancing test. They resolved by
Speaker 1: saying that during the first tribmester of pregnancy, governments could
Speaker 1: not prohibit abortion at all. During the second trimester, the
Speaker 1: government could require reasonable health regulations, and that during the
Speaker 1: third trimester of pregnancy, abortions could be entirely been except
Speaker 1: in cases where they were necessary to save the life
Speaker 1: or health of a pregnant person. Trying to remember which
Speaker 1: comedian it was. I think it might have been like
Speaker 1: Bill Maher back in the day, who had a little
Speaker 1: a bit where he was like, if dudes could get pregnant,
Speaker 1: you'd be able to get an abortion at the drive
Speaker 1: through McDonald's. Yeah, you can get the vending machine some ship,
Speaker 1: But as a result of this balancing test in the
Speaker 1: way that it allowed for some state restrictions on abortion.
Speaker 1: As a result, laws very significantly from state to state.
Speaker 1: For example, twelve states restrict coverage abortion and private insurance plans,
Speaker 1: and forty five states allow individual healthcare providers to refuse
Speaker 1: to participate in an abortion, and then forty two states
Speaker 1: also allow institutions to refuse to perform abortions. Eighteen states
Speaker 1: mandate that women be given counseling before abortions that include
Speaker 1: information on at least one of the following the purported
Speaker 1: link between abortion and breast cancer. At five states, the
Speaker 1: ability of a feat is to feel pain. That's in't
Speaker 1: thirteen states, or the long term mental health consequences for
Speaker 1: the woman, and that's in eight states. Twenty states require
Speaker 1: women seeking an abortion to wait a specified period of time,
Speaker 1: usually twenty four hours, between when she receives his counseling
Speaker 1: and when the procedure is performed. Thirteens of these states
Speaker 1: have laws that effectively require the women to make two
Speaker 1: separate trips to the clinic to obtain a procedure. In
Speaker 1: places like Georgia, where we have I don't know three
Speaker 1: providers in the whole state. That would mean driving several
Speaker 1: hours to go get your counseling, also not only afford
Speaker 1: the abortion, but also afford a hotel room to stay
Speaker 1: the night to then actually have the procedure the next day,
Speaker 1: and then like the last is parental involvement. In thirty
Speaker 1: seven states requires some sort of parental involvement in the
Speaker 1: minor's decision to have an abortion. Twenty seven states require
Speaker 1: one or both both parents to consent on the procedure,
Speaker 1: while ten require that one or both parents be notified.
Speaker 1: So the idea that anywhere in America that there exists
Speaker 1: abortion on demand, Whether you think that's wrong or right
Speaker 1: or not, it's another thing. But the fact that anybody
Speaker 1: thinks that that exists is proof of how effective the
Speaker 1: propaganda is. Yeah, it's it's really interesting that folks I think,
Speaker 1: like a lot of like libs that in blue states
Speaker 1: aren't even going to be impacted by this at all.
Speaker 1: The way, Um, that's the point. The point. The point
Speaker 1: is that it becomes a privilege and that only rich
Speaker 1: people can do it. Yeah, abortion will always be available
Speaker 1: to rich people. This just makes it harder for poor
Speaker 1: people to have the right to choose what happens in
Speaker 1: their lives and of worse comes to worse, and Trump
Speaker 1: is able to install a new Supreme Court justice before January?
Speaker 1: Who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. Planned Parenthood,
Speaker 1: the nation's largest abortion provider, says that sweeping bands could
Speaker 1: be imposed in twenty states that are home to an
Speaker 1: estimated twenty five million women of childberry age. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot drafted consequences for the rest of US.
Speaker 1: Last year's anti abortion legislation in several Southern states sparked
Speaker 1: a many outcry from some mainstream hip hop figures. Atlanta
Speaker 1: rapper Offset from the group Me Gooes, as well as
Speaker 1: Dreamville rapper j I D had some tweets to say
Speaker 1: about the topic, with Offset stating, quote the new laws
Speaker 1: as slavery to force rape victims to keep the child
Speaker 1: as slavery, I'm not proud to say I'm from America,
Speaker 1: and j I D chimed in with quote the Georgia
Speaker 1: abortion bills ship is fucking dumb. This country don't give
Speaker 1: a funk about women for real. Perhaps the most outspoken
Speaker 1: of the mainstream hip hop figures to speak about those
Speaker 1: abortion bands was Alabama rapper Chica who got to use
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Kimmel stage to do her song Richie Versus Alabama,
Speaker 1: which was directly about the issue at hand. Alabama they
Speaker 1: were trying to criminalize abortion by passing a heartbeat bill,
Speaker 1: meaning the six week banning abortion after the six week mark,
Speaker 1: wherein most women have no idea that they're pregnant, but
Speaker 1: that's when the fetal heartbeat is first detected. I mean
Speaker 1: bands like these impact for people and people of color
Speaker 1: the most. Um, Black women have been found to be
Speaker 1: four times as likely as white women to have an
Speaker 1: abortion in our lifetimes, and these laws are often passed
Speaker 1: in states like Georgia, like Alabama that have high populations
Speaker 1: of people of color UM and who also through you
Speaker 1: know defunding of social services through like a weekend social
Speaker 1: safety net, have little the way is of time and
Speaker 1: resources to be traveling multiple hours to go to a
Speaker 1: clinic or to go make an appointment twice and give
Speaker 1: to sit through counseling UM or even you know access
Speaker 1: in the healthcare to have an O B G Y
Speaker 1: in you see regularly too, you know, find out if
Speaker 1: you're pregnant for sure, without a time frame where you
Speaker 1: can actually go see someone to get the procedure if
Speaker 1: you need it. So, um, it's no surprise, really, um
Speaker 1: that hip hop has spoken out given the way that
Speaker 1: does impact communities of color disproportionately. So what do you
Speaker 1: think is at the heart of the argument for those
Speaker 1: who are against abortion, like those people who would call
Speaker 1: themselves pro life? Do you do you think it's like
Speaker 1: a genuine argument or that that is coming from a
Speaker 1: genuine place, or we you know the or at the
Speaker 1: root of it, or we're just talking about misogyny, internalized
Speaker 1: and original recipe. It's hard for me to say, because
Speaker 1: I'm I don't know intimately a ton of pro life
Speaker 1: people or don't choose to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: discussing these matters with those who I do know. I
Speaker 1: can't help but feel like it's about just grinding the
Speaker 1: least among us into abject misery through and purely because
Speaker 1: of its coupling with you know this, this staunch opposition
Speaker 1: to abortion, with this commitment to do funding social services
Speaker 1: to make it impossible, or if you have a child,
Speaker 1: that you can put them, put the child in in
Speaker 1: pre K and have access to childcare, that they have
Speaker 1: good schools, that they could go to that you have
Speaker 1: a job that pays you enough to make sure the kid,
Speaker 1: can you know, have the right baby books and get
Speaker 1: the nice formula and have you know, all the diapers
Speaker 1: and all the things that you need. Like, I can't
Speaker 1: help but see these two um, these policy fetiship is
Speaker 1: wedded together within a singular ideology. It can't be anything
Speaker 1: but pure malice if you show me the person that
Speaker 1: exists that is like anti gun, is against every war,
Speaker 1: who's saying no death penalty for anyone, feed the homeless,
Speaker 1: take care of the poor, and also there are pro life.
Speaker 1: I don't have to agree with that person, but at
Speaker 1: least I can accept that person is coming from a
Speaker 1: genuine place that it's like, hey, you believe that ship,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. But some motherfucker who's got
Speaker 1: Trump on the back of their pickup truck and then
Speaker 1: they own like seventy five guns and having wet dreams
Speaker 1: about killing Antifa and ship talking about save the children,
Speaker 1: pro life, get the fuck out of here with that ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like I love war and I can't I can't
Speaker 1: look past that because it's you of honesty. At that point,
Speaker 1: it's like the whole premise of the argument is false.
Speaker 1: So then it just comes across like you're disingenuous and
Speaker 1: you feel like a big fucking troll. And then I
Speaker 1: don't even want to engage with you to hear any
Speaker 1: of you blah blah blah. I can't help but feel
Speaker 1: that way. And I think it might be, you know,
Speaker 1: a lack of understanding, like maybe if I truly understood
Speaker 1: where people are coming from with like empathy factor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but just when you look at that whole suite of
Speaker 1: policy obsessions together, it just doesn't it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: anything but uh, trying to make life totally miserable for
Speaker 1: a certain subsect of the population, subset of the population.
Speaker 1: It looks like a duck cracks like a duck. So, Mac,
Speaker 1: you came across some original research right on this topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it came across an original research article titled Abortion and
Speaker 1: Contemporary Hip Hop a Thematic Analysis of Lyrics from two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen. It's pretty formal research with the objective
Speaker 1: to evaluate the representation of abortion and contemporary hip hop,
Speaker 1: gaining insight into a myriad of attitudes of abortion in
Speaker 1: the black community. And it was put together by She's
Speaker 1: from Kumar, Catherine Brown, Bisa, and Andrew F. V. Jackson.
Speaker 1: Pretty Much, what they did is they used the rap
Speaker 1: lyric search engine Genius and compiled some keywords and phrases
Speaker 1: having to do with family planning, abortion, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: they analyzed it and you know, went through what they found. Now,
Speaker 1: the most obvious and striking result to me was that
Speaker 1: out of the six thousand, five hundred and seventy seven
Speaker 1: songs available, a total of one hundred and one songs
Speaker 1: performed formed by a hundred and twenty two individual artists
Speaker 1: met the criteria. The majority of the artists were black men.
Speaker 1: Five artists were black women. I mean, I think just
Speaker 1: the propor like, I feel like that's proportionate to the
Speaker 1: numbers the number of like professional recording artists, you know,
Speaker 1: men versus women. It doesn't surprise me that there are
Speaker 1: so many men speaking out an issue if it doesn't
Speaker 1: really have fucking a thing to do with them, it's
Speaker 1: not really their fucking business. I mean, like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: oh no, that number seems mad low yo, Like, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that, first of all, I think
Speaker 1: way more women raped than is represented in that number, right,
Speaker 1: or is that true. I mean, like, like if we're
Speaker 1: also fostering it to the lens of just bias in
Speaker 1: the industry, it was a lot fewer professional female recording
Speaker 1: artists on a level that not even I don't haven't's
Speaker 1: like five of us. I don't know. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: if this list has like a hundred or so male
Speaker 1: rappers that are rapping about abortion and then you've got
Speaker 1: like fifty or so female rappers talking about it, then
Speaker 1: I but I mean five because I can think off
Speaker 1: the top of my head five rappers that are female
Speaker 1: that I know aren't on this list that I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was naive, but I just expected that, whether
Speaker 1: it be the issue of abortion directly or the things
Speaker 1: around that, I thought this list was going to be
Speaker 1: filled with female mcs. Now, some key themes that they
Speaker 1: found in terms of how abortion was used in songs
Speaker 1: was the use of abortion as braggadocio, equating abortion with sin, genocide, murder,
Speaker 1: male pressure for women to seek abortion, and and specific
Speaker 1: association of planned parenthood services with abortion. Now, I did
Speaker 1: not use there their collection of songs to put together
Speaker 1: our list. Um, but with that said, I found just
Speaker 1: keeping it real The general attitude towards the topic of
Speaker 1: abortion and hip hop over the years has been one
Speaker 1: from a I think stark and undeniable conservative angle. I mean,
Speaker 1: hip hop being what it is and you hearing the results,
Speaker 1: it's obviously a male centric point of view, but even
Speaker 1: when it's the women of hip hop speaking on the subject,
Speaker 1: it's rarely, if ever presented as like a joyous celebration
Speaker 1: of liberation, you know. And there's definitely a heavy religious
Speaker 1: angle to it too, but you know that can be
Speaker 1: something that we can't even cover another episode. But let's
Speaker 1: get to these songs. Yeah, so let's take into some
Speaker 1: of these representations, starting with Fresh and the track abortion Baby.
Speaker 1: Yis yo na what? Yeah? Y'all need to see Maria's
Speaker 1: face right now. So he's just buying into like the
Speaker 1: fucking welfare queen even on eighties standards. That ship trash
Speaker 1: trash trash song. Okay, So first of all, it opens
Speaker 1: up with Rockabye Baby. You know how like in all
Speaker 1: the movie trailers now they play like a familiar theme
Speaker 1: but with creepy piano. Well, this ship's got the creepy
Speaker 1: piano version of Rockabye Baby to start it out, Like
Speaker 1: you're getting ready to watch the new Chucky movie or
Speaker 1: some ship. It really comes across as like some Christian
Speaker 1: right the more that you go into it, it really
Speaker 1: is on some like Christian right ship. Some of the
Speaker 1: lyrics include all of us were born into a life
Speaker 1: of sin. That's something in the jeans buried deep within.
Speaker 1: On the hookie raps about the world's morals being out
Speaker 1: of proportion. And then, of course, to start off the
Speaker 1: fucking song, he's saying, girl, you must be crazy to
Speaker 1: kill a newborn baby, So I mean, heikes, but to
Speaker 1: give or take life, you gotta pay the price. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? What price does that mean? I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that I remember in two thousand sixteen when Trump
Speaker 1: was running for office and he was saying that if
Speaker 1: if somebody, if a woman gets an abortion, that she should,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, be charged prosecuted. So sounds
Speaker 1: just in line with that straight out of the Duckie
Speaker 1: Fresh joint. I mean, yeah, that should straight up. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like some religious propaganda. It's super high cringe levels.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go to the next one. You got
Speaker 1: laft or fetal, Yeah, lafem fetal by Digible Planets. The
Speaker 1: song is it has always been around, it will always
Speaker 1: have a niche, but they'll make it a privilege not
Speaker 1: accessible only to the rich. Hey dah talking about fighting
Speaker 1: the fucking fascists ninety one, what's up? So Yeah, it
Speaker 1: definitely has a strong narrative approach. Yeah, and it has
Speaker 1: a storytelling approach. Um that finds Butterfly the rapper, being
Speaker 1: called over to some friends house who just found out
Speaker 1: they were pregnant. Um, they want to get an abortion.
Speaker 1: They're worried about being harassed by anti abortion protesters at
Speaker 1: the clinic, and the song just plays out is like,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy having the conversation with his friends.
Speaker 1: I can almost imagine the story taking place in like
Speaker 1: the nineties, seventies or something. If you know Digible Planets
Speaker 1: or have ever heard them, especially that first album Reaching
Speaker 1: It has like that retro jazzy vibe to it, So
Speaker 1: I can almost imagine this story playing out in the
Speaker 1: seventies before Roe v. Wade or shortly after. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very spoken word like and it's very political. They talk
Speaker 1: about the socio economic like pressures that way into the
Speaker 1: decision of keeping a child or not and out of
Speaker 1: all of these songs, it's the only one where Ropie
Speaker 1: Wade is actually addressed directly by now yeah yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And then they clearly call out anti abortion activists that's
Speaker 1: fascists and talking about fighting the fash and the way
Speaker 1: the Butterfly went about writing that conversation with his friend
Speaker 1: telling him that she's pregnant. Our love was a third
Speaker 1: and spontaneity has brought a third, but due to our
Speaker 1: youth and our economic state, we wish to terminate. And
Speaker 1: for this we don't feel great with baby. That's how
Speaker 1: it is. That's how it is. That's one of those
Speaker 1: stink face bars, you know when a rhyme is so
Speaker 1: dope that should just make you make a face like
Speaker 1: you smell something stink. The next the next one is
Speaker 1: also like a really creative take on the issue. This
Speaker 1: is Jane Gray with my story before friends that dope.
Speaker 1: So she spoke to dj booth dot com about the
Speaker 1: song and said the following. The whole idea was, no,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a song that was this real
Speaker 1: about it taking you into the room, the anesthetic you're
Speaker 1: going through the whole process, especially experiencing as a teenager
Speaker 1: and not having anyone to share it with. I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure whether it's autobiographical or she's playing characters in
Speaker 1: the different verses or not. It sounds like some of
Speaker 1: it is drawing from Like it feels like some of
Speaker 1: it's drawing from real experiences. Then some of it is like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I had no idea that Jean Gray went through that.
Speaker 1: If that's real, you know, Um, there's a part where
Speaker 1: she talks about having three kids she'll never see it's
Speaker 1: still being equated to murder someone. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: that's that's real. Like that sense of regret regardless of
Speaker 1: what your stance is, uh, you know, in my own experience,
Speaker 1: like being like very staunch feminists and like, oh of course,
Speaker 1: like you know, being twenty two three years old, I
Speaker 1: thought like, I can't you know, have a kid, but
Speaker 1: you know, that lingering sense of that lingering sense of
Speaker 1: like wondering what could have been and if you made
Speaker 1: the right decision, et cetera. I think, yeah, that hits everyone,
Speaker 1: and so that's really rude those thoughts. I think they
Speaker 1: can exist at the same time for sure. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: these days, I'm very glad for what I did that
Speaker 1: I have the life that I have now, I definitely
Speaker 1: still don't think, you know, I could have you know,
Speaker 1: be a good parent at this point in my life,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't want to put a kid through that. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, you can like know you did the
Speaker 1: right thing and feel bad about it at the same time.
Speaker 1: So popular rapper Nicki Minaj is touched on the subject
Speaker 1: a couple of times in her songs. With one of
Speaker 1: her songs All Things Go, she makes a little bit
Speaker 1: of a reference about getting an abortion as a teenager.
Speaker 1: It's really just in passing. It's not really a focus
Speaker 1: at all, But in an earlier song Autobiography, she goes
Speaker 1: into it with the whole verse keep conceive the concept
Speaker 1: of w Yeah. I think she's working through a lot
Speaker 1: of the questions that come up, the things that linger
Speaker 1: on your mind. And I think that's like healthy and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of happy for her that she had an
Speaker 1: artistic space in which to do that, because they are
Speaker 1: things that can stay with you for a long time.
Speaker 1: I know want people to think that's all it is like,
Speaker 1: to be too scared to go forward with something that's
Speaker 1: right for you because of these representations of the mental anguish.
Speaker 1: It's just like, uh, yeah, it is like a complex thing.
Speaker 1: There's a sense of relief and a sense of getting
Speaker 1: your life back, and then there's you know, also these
Speaker 1: glimpses of just wondering, all right next to someone who's
Speaker 1: kind of become a show favorite at this point. But
Speaker 1: this is no name with the song Bye Bye Baby,
Speaker 1: like this muscle hesitated almost wait king, yeah, it's it's personification,
Speaker 1: she says to DJ dot Com of a mother who
Speaker 1: has an abortion and the baby. I feel like whenever
Speaker 1: I hear people talking about abortion, they typically take the
Speaker 1: love out of it, as if it can never be
Speaker 1: a loving act, as if it's only done out of
Speaker 1: hate or desperation. I know women who have gone through
Speaker 1: that experience and there hasn't been like a song for
Speaker 1: them or a moment of cartharsis and healing for them
Speaker 1: in music. That ship was just important to me as
Speaker 1: a woman, as someone who cares about these women. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's dope to try to create through art
Speaker 1: a space of healing for other people, since if catharsis
Speaker 1: when they see themselves reflected in the content of a
Speaker 1: song important part of normalized thing that the turbulence of
Speaker 1: that decision making process. Books go through with the anguish
Speaker 1: of of figuring out what's right for them, and so
Speaker 1: I think it's really dope that you create up. That's
Speaker 1: the famous Tupac line from the song keep your Head Up.
Speaker 1: I can only speak for myself, but I would imagine
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of men my age whole like
Speaker 1: opinion on the topic is based off of hearing that
Speaker 1: line when they were like twelve or thirteen. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: I was like, no, cat for real, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like I've given some of the pervasive stigma on
Speaker 1: abortion within like the black community and then within the
Speaker 1: hip hop community especially. This was sort of like the
Speaker 1: vanguard of him to say at that point in time,
Speaker 1: even that just a couple of years or the air,
Speaker 1: Douggi Fresh was talking about how our morals are all
Speaker 1: blown out of proportion and ship all right up next,
Speaker 1: oh boy, look, I'm just we keep it real on
Speaker 1: the show, all right, just call it how I see it.
Speaker 1: Next one is pretty cringe e as well, But this
Speaker 1: is Nick Cannon with can I live? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's the price of living? What mommy like this clinic?
Speaker 1: Hopefully you make the right decision, Okay, Okay, okay, wrap
Speaker 1: it up, Nick Cannon. Um, okay, So first thoughts, that's bad,
Speaker 1: all right. So he wraps as if he's, you know,
Speaker 1: like he's the baby in his mother's womb, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I guess talking to her with telepathy or something, and
Speaker 1: it's trying to convince her not to go through with
Speaker 1: the abortion. So like he's saying, ship like, Mommy, I
Speaker 1: don't like this clinic. Just throw up in my mouth
Speaker 1: a little bit. Um. He's even squirming so that she
Speaker 1: feels him moving, and the hook has the refrain cannot
Speaker 1: live and they say that a couple of times. By
Speaker 1: Anthony Hamilton's on the hooks, it's kind of cringe. But
Speaker 1: at the end of it, he's got a little disclaimer
Speaker 1: ad libs where you know, he kind of lets you
Speaker 1: know that it's just a story and he's not passing
Speaker 1: any judgment. It's a matter of fact. Let me read
Speaker 1: this verbatim because I want to quote him on this,
Speaker 1: all right, and these ad libs, Nick says, this is
Speaker 1: real uplifting, y'all. I ain't passing no judgments, ain't making
Speaker 1: no decisions. I'm just telling you my story. I love
Speaker 1: life and I love my mother forgiving me life. And
Speaker 1: I think those you know, those perspectives are valuable too,
Speaker 1: to let people know that in a world where you
Speaker 1: may feel forced to to uh not half a child,
Speaker 1: if you choose to do that yourself and like find
Speaker 1: joy in that and enjoying motherhood, that's the beautiful thing too. Um.
Speaker 1: We didn't include the Lauren Hill song Zion on this list,
Speaker 1: but her song Zion is pretty much about that same
Speaker 1: exact concept of her getting pregnant at the height of
Speaker 1: her fame and the people around her telling her, you
Speaker 1: know that she should get rid of the child, but
Speaker 1: her keeping it now the joy in her world is Zion.
Speaker 1: Y'all know that fucking song. I didn't put it on
Speaker 1: here because it don't got any wraps in it. Next
Speaker 1: we got coming in. This song actually features Lauren Hill,
Speaker 1: but this is a song retrospect for life with a gun.
Speaker 1: What's the really thought? I was gone to take the
Speaker 1: life on my side. I could have sacrifice going out
Speaker 1: to think my home. We did it, I used to
Speaker 1: choke about from now on you felt control instead of
Speaker 1: control because we got an abortion for three I want that,
Speaker 1: you gotta you know, Yeah, inflation is a bit is
Speaker 1: either that or those are like fucking Walmart value sales
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. I don't want to hate,
Speaker 1: I don't want to judge anything. I think. I think
Speaker 1: it does a very nuanced represent It's a very nuanced
Speaker 1: representation of the conversation that people have. You know, No,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think if for somebody who's
Speaker 1: worried about messaging, the first verse by itself can might
Speaker 1: make you a little ways the song leading, but when
Speaker 1: you take the whole song into account, paints like a
Speaker 1: bigger picture about like what Commons trying to say with
Speaker 1: the song as a whole. The first verse definitely find
Speaker 1: with some of some of the other things that we've
Speaker 1: listened to. But but that second verse does come in
Speaker 1: strong to kind of just round it out and not
Speaker 1: even necessarily switch up what he's talking about from the
Speaker 1: first verse, but just giving you a more you know,
Speaker 1: rounded uh opinion about it. But we're gonna end it there.
Speaker 1: We've got a ton of notable mentions for you. Just
Speaker 1: some other songs for you to check out that are
Speaker 1: about this topic if you're interested. Um J. Cole has
Speaker 1: Lost Ones. Tech nine has a real interesting one called
Speaker 1: Real killer Um arrested development the group, not the show.
Speaker 1: They had a track called Warm Sentiments and that was
Speaker 1: dope as well. I think we got to end the show.
Speaker 1: What's about it for the day, trying to try to
Speaker 1: feel like I mean, it's past it's past twelve, so
Speaker 1: it's your birthday. You're officially twenty nine. We gotta get
Speaker 1: the birthday freestyle. Okay, birthday, since my mother chose to
Speaker 1: have me, let's do a little do little celebration freestyle.
Speaker 1: So make sure you go check out my heart reparations
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Shout out to jan Cosby for the beats.
Speaker 1: This episode hit us up on our personal ship. Do
Speaker 1: all that ship? I do it now? Uh uh yo?
Speaker 1: Betteral abortion lot? How they gets struck down? What then?
Speaker 1: How are they gonna go and pick a judge down?
Speaker 1: RBG so hasn't even see something now, but they're gonna
Speaker 1: go and try to stop me from driving to Atlanta
Speaker 1: and my gelapi sit down in a little clintic lobby
Speaker 1: wheezing in savvy. When I think about trying to be
Speaker 1: a mop, me not me. I got too many jobbs
Speaker 1: and hobbies yo yo. But Counto said he got the votes,
Speaker 1: so he said, but they really want to overturn roby Way.
Speaker 1: They want to push the judge through with no delay.
Speaker 1: It's like two thousand sixteen. They press replay. You can
Speaker 1: see the hypocrisy. But these motherfucker's looking like the Nazis
Speaker 1: be if they get another judge, Homie, we will not
Speaker 1: be free protesting outside. They will lock these streets with
Speaker 1: a power to be killing true, and Trump's gonna parton
Speaker 1: out still in groop. Don't follow the mold, don't care
Speaker 1: what you told. You don't gotta like Buyen. I don't
Speaker 1: care if he's old. But if you think that's crazy,
Speaker 1: you're really gonna be bad when they bring back slavery ship.
Speaker 1: I'm legal, Franka, I'm dope Knife. We are waiting on reparation,
Speaker 1: Aria Waiting on Reparations as a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.