Speaker 1: Uh are you're waiting on reparations? You're listening to Waiting
Speaker 1: on reparations a production of I Heart Radio. All I
Speaker 1: hear is nigga. This nigga that I'm telling everybody at
Speaker 1: the bowling Alley where my nigga is, that everybody know
Speaker 1: they got their triggers grass. If I actually need to
Speaker 1: worry about that, I'm putting us in present for smoking grass.
Speaker 1: Lockdown with a sentence that will last long. And they
Speaker 1: don't want me saying the N word in my rap song.
Speaker 1: Niggas want to sense to me. Put me in the penitentiary,
Speaker 1: Lock me in the box and put me there for centurieson.
Speaker 1: Then when I get mad to be like yo, that
Speaker 1: nigga's menacing, sick my middle finger up at every racist sentity. Ah,
Speaker 1: I got your white teeth, hey, white teeth. If you
Speaker 1: come up against me with your little white sheet on
Speaker 1: your head like you was acting all nightly trying to
Speaker 1: say the A word, I'm probably gonna spike me. How
Speaker 1: to spike you in the face, Like my name was
Speaker 1: Spike Lee. And if it's Spike Lee, you better go
Speaker 1: and do the right thing. You say the wrong shit
Speaker 1: around me, know what it might bring and you're the
Speaker 1: fighting motherfucker's exciting. It's like a new igniting. Alright, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's up. My name's Dope Knife from Lingua Franca. We
Speaker 1: are waiting on reparations. We are here another week, fresh
Speaker 1: air to breathe now now, well, last week I just
Speaker 1: started teaching my hip hop and Public policy class. Shout out,
Speaker 1: Walker Swain if the department is in. Yeah, I sucked
Speaker 1: it up, my co teacher. So tomorrow we have our
Speaker 1: second day of class, and we're talking about Tanisi coats
Speaker 1: is case for reparations and analyzing it for the different
Speaker 1: public policies that come up in it as well, and
Speaker 1: doing that same kind of analysis on most des mathematics,
Speaker 1: sort of like look at something that's more of a
Speaker 1: policy brief and an argument as something that's more just
Speaker 1: like hip hop CNN coverage of life in the streets
Speaker 1: and the way that public policy manifests in both of
Speaker 1: those texts. The class line hour long, so that'll be
Speaker 1: probably the whole class, but we're gonna have to we gotta,
Speaker 1: we gotta go into that. Yeah, we should bring Walker
Speaker 1: on the show. We should. Uh. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: bring in some of my students perspectives in the future
Speaker 1: episodes to see the kind of things that they say.
Speaker 1: They're freshman, a little baby, so maybe they won't really
Speaker 1: have anything insideful to say. You never know. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we had the two conventions, and we've had the media
Speaker 1: coverage that follows, and the different shifts in the poll
Speaker 1: numbers and stuff like that. One of the interesting shifts
Speaker 1: and pulling that kind of caught my eye was I
Speaker 1: noticed that in recent weeks that the soaring high approval
Speaker 1: numbers that Black Lives Matter had is kind of leveled
Speaker 1: out to being something a bit more realistic. What do
Speaker 1: you what are your thoughts on that. The thing about
Speaker 1: these poll numbers with regards to support for b LAM,
Speaker 1: you have to look back historically at how unpopular things
Speaker 1: like integration of schools was at the time. Like if
Speaker 1: you know, like it's it doesn't record, Like I think
Speaker 1: people need to let go what I'm talking more about now,
Speaker 1: like in the moment, because the people who are already
Speaker 1: against it are already like manipulating imagery and stuff to
Speaker 1: paint the protests is something that's not or to paint
Speaker 1: the rioting is being more part of the protest than
Speaker 1: it is. Do you think there's like a risk of protests,
Speaker 1: fatigue and backfiring. I mean, if it weren't footage of
Speaker 1: the protests, it would be footage, it would be fottage
Speaker 1: from literal world star like of black people being the
Speaker 1: ship out of each other kids that they would use
Speaker 1: to stoke those racial fears that have always been there anyway,
Speaker 1: So I really feel like we'd be at this point regardless.
Speaker 1: Now I feel you on that, that's for sure. So um,
Speaker 1: today's episode is going to be part two ongoing series
Speaker 1: that we started at the beginning of the show called
Speaker 1: That's Race Is. In today's episode, we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about one of the most controversial words around and most
Speaker 1: used depending on you know where you're at, Yes, party people,
Speaker 1: I am talking about the N word. You mean ni
Speaker 1: or at least it's hard our cousin. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about how it's managed to stick around for so long
Speaker 1: and as well as explores prevalence in hip hop music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we'll try to see what type of commentary
Speaker 1: rappers have made on it in music as well. What
Speaker 1: do you what's your experience with the word, you know,
Speaker 1: besides using it in rap songs. I haven't been called
Speaker 1: like a nigger by like a white person outside the
Speaker 1: context of the internet, uh, in a long time, not
Speaker 1: since I was like a kid. I feel like, what
Speaker 1: were the contexts in which you were like elementary school,
Speaker 1: Like this white kid like refused to hold the door
Speaker 1: open for me or something and then like called me
Speaker 1: a nigger, like as he like slammed the door in
Speaker 1: my face. And mean, what was the aftermath? I mean,
Speaker 1: he got in trouble. We had taken to the principal's
Speaker 1: office of ship and like talking to but I still
Speaker 1: had to stay. I was like in fifth grade class
Speaker 1: with him for the rest of the year, you know,
Speaker 1: like he was still around. Yeah, I have a similar story.
Speaker 1: I mean when I was we're saying third grade and
Speaker 1: the Malcolm X movie had just come out. You know,
Speaker 1: motherfucker was going to school where in the cap in
Speaker 1: the sweater that had the X on it. That was
Speaker 1: probably the first time that I had a bunch of
Speaker 1: heard a bunch of white kids say it to me. There.
Speaker 1: As far as the internet ship goes and comments sections,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I've have been or get called a
Speaker 1: nigger and comments sections. But you know, I I don't
Speaker 1: really I don't know. I just don't consider in terms
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about. I'm not really considering like
Speaker 1: the virtual world of the Internet and social media. But
Speaker 1: like my father didn't really use the word that much
Speaker 1: or even with his friends and my mom's Africans, so
Speaker 1: like she didn't even really hear that ship, so she
Speaker 1: came to the States. So it was something that I
Speaker 1: got exclusively from listening to rap music and ship and
Speaker 1: being in these international schools for you know, people who
Speaker 1: live overseas and shipped, like nine times of ten. I
Speaker 1: was the only black kid, or one of the only
Speaker 1: black kids in school. So it wasn't until I graduated
Speaker 1: high school and went to Howard University that I was
Speaker 1: around other black folks and started hearing it more and
Speaker 1: incorporated into how I spoke and ship out, Like what's
Speaker 1: your usage of it is something that you only use
Speaker 1: in your because you use it very sparingly in your
Speaker 1: rap songs, like I use it very sparely my rap songs.
Speaker 1: I have occasionally actively used it in front of white people,
Speaker 1: like when I'm only with white people, and then like
Speaker 1: felt really embarrassed and bad in what sense I was
Speaker 1: trying to remember. So I was in Charleston right before
Speaker 1: the pandemic hit. I was hanging out my friends Chris
Speaker 1: and Elliott, and something happened. We were at the hotel,
Speaker 1: like drinking and laughing, and at some point I said
Speaker 1: stuff like nigga, what And then like I stopped and
Speaker 1: I realized who else with like a bunch of these
Speaker 1: like you know, like gnarly white dudes. And I was
Speaker 1: just like, because I don't, like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just weird. Well, I mean, like I didn't mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to, It just slips out sometimes. I mean,
Speaker 1: most of my white friends are like hip hop has
Speaker 1: and people who raped, So I don't know, there's a
Speaker 1: certain when I say it in front of them, there's
Speaker 1: like a certain level of not even being an issue
Speaker 1: because everybody there knows what's up. So nobody's thinking it's
Speaker 1: nigga that you know. It's like no one is getting
Speaker 1: it twisted, and they just understand that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't even I'm not even really that conscious of
Speaker 1: it now. I mean, it really literally is some I
Speaker 1: say it the same way I would say dude, no, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe to have come about in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: as an adaptation of the Spanish codinia grow, which was
Speaker 1: itself at to send the Latin adjective and I G
Speaker 1: e r, which means black um. By the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: especially the United States, has come to as we know,
Speaker 1: be considered a racial insult, and as such it's acceptance
Speaker 1: in popular culture, especially by non black people, has faded.
Speaker 1: Its original English language usage, it was a word for
Speaker 1: dark skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the
Speaker 1: term dates back to fifteen seventy four, in a work
Speaker 1: alluding to the n I G E r s of
Speaker 1: the ethiop Bearing Witness. According to the Oxford's English Dictionary,
Speaker 1: the first derogatory usage of the term wasn't recorded until
Speaker 1: two hundred years later in seventeen seventy five. In the
Speaker 1: Colonial America of the fifteen nineteen, one of the earliest
Speaker 1: English settlers of North America, John Rolf, used any g
Speaker 1: A r s in describing African slave ship to the
Speaker 1: Virginia Colony in the eighteen hundreds of eighteen forties. In
Speaker 1: the West. In US during the fur trade, it was
Speaker 1: spelled n I G G you are, and it was
Speaker 1: common in literature at the time. It was recorded in
Speaker 1: the mountain Man lexicon by British explorer George Frederick Ruxton,
Speaker 1: and apparently it didn't have any pejorative connotation back then.
Speaker 1: Um and I G G you are was evidently similar
Speaker 1: to the modern use of the term dude guy. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of similar to how it operates now, only
Speaker 1: it was used by white people. Yeah. Um. This passage
Speaker 1: from Ruxton's life in the Far West illustrates how the
Speaker 1: word was used in spoken firm Uh. The speaker is
Speaker 1: referring to himself here and he says, I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to do this traveler marm, This niggers, No traveler, I
Speaker 1: are trapper marm a mountain man walk all right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't mount then, you know, use it. They didn't use
Speaker 1: it in this period exclusively for black people. Also use
Speaker 1: it for Indians, Mexicans, French men. Yeah, anyone could be
Speaker 1: in an I A G D U I UM. The
Speaker 1: noun slipped back and forth between derogatory and endearing. Thank
Speaker 1: Colored and negro became more respectful alternatives with time. For example,
Speaker 1: in the eighteen fifties, abolitionous organizations posted warnings Colored people
Speaker 1: of Boston, you were respectfully caution to avoid conversion with
Speaker 1: watchman and police officers of Boston. Journalists Clifton Johnson documented
Speaker 1: in nineteen o four how it was used in the South,
Speaker 1: specifically because it was more offensive than colored or negrown.
Speaker 1: The letter Niggers in the White House. It was a
Speaker 1: poem published in newspapers all over the country for three
Speaker 1: years from nineteen o one to nineteen o three, in
Speaker 1: reaction to the White House dinner that was hosted by
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt, who had invited book or T. Washington at
Speaker 1: the time. And it reminds me kind of how Fox
Speaker 1: News reacted when Obama invited common to the White House.
Speaker 1: Like they were, I mean, they were going crazy for
Speaker 1: a little bit. They're like, have you heard this song
Speaker 1: song about the Solder? And they're all like using their shipment.
Speaker 1: In the book Bury That Soccer, A Scandalous Love Affair
Speaker 1: with the N Word by H. Lewis Smith, he writes
Speaker 1: that replacing the e er with A changes nothing other
Speaker 1: than the pronunciation. The African American Registry notes that brother, brother, sister,
Speaker 1: sister are terms of endearment. Nigger was still a word
Speaker 1: of disrespect, and the double a CP It's well has
Speaker 1: condemned the use of both and I G G A
Speaker 1: and I G G E R. Some early documentation of
Speaker 1: the word not using a pejorative fashion amongst black people
Speaker 1: was in nineteen twelve in the book The Autobiography of
Speaker 1: an ex Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, who he
Speaker 1: could have his own episode. He's like some biracial guy
Speaker 1: who had like the sold Yeah, we'll definitely get into him. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: But he recounted in a scene from the book, when
Speaker 1: he was in New York City at the time, he goes,
Speaker 1: I noticed among this class of colored men the word
Speaker 1: nigger was freely used in about the same sense as
Speaker 1: the world fellow, and sometimes as a term of endearment.
Speaker 1: But I soon learned what its use was, positively and
Speaker 1: absolutely prohibited to white men. So that was as early
Speaker 1: the nineteen will that this was documented, a documented cultural
Speaker 1: practice of it being used frequently among African Americans but
Speaker 1: prohibited among whites. Says from two thousand six show that
Speaker 1: nearly half of whites and two thirds of blacks knew
Speaker 1: someone personally who are fewed referred to blacks by the term,
Speaker 1: and that was two thousand six. So like some cultural
Speaker 1: elements of it. So the implied racism of the word
Speaker 1: has rendered its use taboo for the most part, So
Speaker 1: like you won't see it in magazoo zines and newspapers generally,
Speaker 1: and if you're watching TV, you're more likely to hear
Speaker 1: the word asks than you actually hear the word nigger,
Speaker 1: And it's gonna be censored regardless of its usage in
Speaker 1: most cases. In most cases, it's been controversial and its
Speaker 1: use in um literature for a long time, the most
Speaker 1: notable and lasting controversies being the words used in Mark
Speaker 1: Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as to
Speaker 1: kill and Mocking Burton. The film Trouble Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Speaker 1: there's an interview with this English teacher named Nancy Methellis
Speaker 1: of the Boston Latin School, and she explains why she
Speaker 1: doesn't use the word in class. She says words are
Speaker 1: amongst the most powerful things there are. A grown up,
Speaker 1: middle aged white woman using that word gives another level
Speaker 1: of meaning than a fifteen year old African American student.
Speaker 1: I think I could hurt students by using it, and
Speaker 1: I don't feel that my minority students want to hear
Speaker 1: their white peers use the word either. And if it
Speaker 1: turns out that we're sacrificing a little academic rigor in
Speaker 1: service of not adding to anyone's pain, maybe that's okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like having a brank dialogue about the way
Speaker 1: the word makes us all feel. I think as a
Speaker 1: component of like an English light which arts class like
Speaker 1: this or something like that is appropriate gauge different people's
Speaker 1: comfort because I try to tell especially like why people well,
Speaker 1: I guess exclusively white people all the time. But it's
Speaker 1: like I might feel comfortable with like people saying that
Speaker 1: word in certain circumstances, but I can't speak for all
Speaker 1: black people. I can't say that as as you know
Speaker 1: the black person, Like this is how we all feel
Speaker 1: about it, And it's really about gauging um, a person's
Speaker 1: individual comfort um because I know some I mean, I
Speaker 1: know some brothers that don't care at all. Who uses
Speaker 1: it at all? Yeah, No, I'm never comfortable with speaking
Speaker 1: like my individual feelings on a subject is like what
Speaker 1: everybody else who looks like me thinks. You know, so
Speaker 1: links and heughs once said used rightly or wrongly, ironically
Speaker 1: or seriously of necessity for the sake of realism or
Speaker 1: impishly for the sake of comedy. It doesn't matter. Negroes
Speaker 1: do not like it in any book or any play whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Be the book or play ever sys sympathetic and its
Speaker 1: treatment of the basic problems of the race, even though
Speaker 1: the book or play is written by a Negro, they
Speaker 1: still do not like it. The word nigger, you see,
Speaker 1: sums up for us who are colored, all the bit
Speaker 1: of years of insult and struggle in America. So that's
Speaker 1: that ship. I don't like talking to be like they
Speaker 1: don't like it, Like who is they? Who are you?
Speaker 1: I mean, like lazy and hughes. I ain't trying to
Speaker 1: start ship with you, alright, pbro like, don't speak for me.
Speaker 1: I wasn't even born yet, nigga, Like damn well, in
Speaker 1: all fairness, he definitely came up in a time where
Speaker 1: no white person who was saying it was saying it
Speaker 1: because their favorite Drake song has the word in it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So just in that context,
Speaker 1: he's probably a bit more uptight about the words usage.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's let's not get it twisted. And this
Speaker 1: is totally pulling numbers out of my ask. But I
Speaker 1: would wager the like of black people in America don't
Speaker 1: funk with white people using the word in any context.
Speaker 1: That would just be my hunch. When giving a reason
Speaker 1: for refusal to go into the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: once said, no viet cong ever called me nigger. And
Speaker 1: that's that goodass internationalist looking at like this oppression of
Speaker 1: the working class all around the world, How you'd take
Speaker 1: me to unite and take down the white supremacist that's
Speaker 1: like that. I guess the whole point of what he's
Speaker 1: saying is especially you know, in context of the time,
Speaker 1: it's like, you got you want me to go over
Speaker 1: there and shoot some some brown yellow men, but y'all
Speaker 1: aren't letting me, and we gotta fight for equality here,
Speaker 1: So funk that? Oh shure, this is an interesting thing
Speaker 1: that I found to check this out. In February of
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, the New York City Council symbolically
Speaker 1: banned the use of the word. However, there is no
Speaker 1: penalty for using it. The formal resolution also requests excluding
Speaker 1: from Grammy consideration every song who's lyrics contain the word. However,
Speaker 1: Ron Roker, the Vice Presidents of Communications for the Recording
Speaker 1: Academy doubted it would have any real effect on actual
Speaker 1: nomination and not. Actually something similar with regards to awards
Speaker 1: and stuff happened to me. I think in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen, I was passed over. I was a finalist
Speaker 1: for the Songwriting Award, but the panel was uncomfortable that
Speaker 1: I use the word nigger and my song you know,
Speaker 1: soft Day but or whatever um because they thought they
Speaker 1: thought it, I guess detracted from it's like literary merit
Speaker 1: because it's like base and it made people uncomfortable. See, okay,
Speaker 1: this is where this is how I would stand in it,
Speaker 1: right if they passed you up or excluded you because
Speaker 1: they're like, yo, we don't funk with that word. It's
Speaker 1: just you know what I'm saying. On on some even
Speaker 1: if if like someone like me would want to like
Speaker 1: judge and be like, oh, that's like some fake moral
Speaker 1: stance or whatever. But if it's like, hey, we don't
Speaker 1: want to use this word and we don't wanna, it's
Speaker 1: just like you know, we're anti this word, then be
Speaker 1: anti that word. But don't make shift up like the
Speaker 1: use of this word affects something's literary or you know,
Speaker 1: artistic merit and ship like that. That's all like, that's
Speaker 1: your opinion, man, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, absolutely
Speaker 1: So in there was a Kendrick Lamar concert and he
Speaker 1: brought a white girl up from stage to come and
Speaker 1: sing some words to the song Matt City with him,
Speaker 1: and she did not stop herself from saying then word.
Speaker 1: It was this whole thing where like they stopped the
Speaker 1: music and you know, he put her on blast, and
Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't really like a mean putting her
Speaker 1: on blast, but it was definitely like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: it just seemed really kind of like staged, but whatever.
Speaker 1: And it's like now you fast forward two years later
Speaker 1: and it's like, I feel like, if it really happened,
Speaker 1: that that girl probably would have been speaking at the
Speaker 1: RNC like on some anti cancel culture ship at that
Speaker 1: time that I got canceled at the Kendrick Lamar concert
Speaker 1: and I haven't heard anything else from her, but just
Speaker 1: in general, the whole conversation of white people hearing it
Speaker 1: in songs and singing along with it or not, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that every white person in that stadium when
Speaker 1: they were doing that ship was wrapping that word along
Speaker 1: up into that point she got the ire until because
Speaker 1: she was in the spotlight. And I mean Kendrick Lamar's
Speaker 1: own labelmate, Schoolboy Q actually has a complete opposite stance
Speaker 1: where he actually encourages about the fucker's at his show
Speaker 1: to like wrap the ship along. He does specify like
Speaker 1: use it here in this space and in this context
Speaker 1: and not so that they don't use it on the
Speaker 1: street or something like that's give him the wrong idea.
Speaker 1: It's like, well my black friends, Schoolboy can said, I
Speaker 1: can um. BBC extras, DJ Sideman actually quit his job
Speaker 1: over report where they used the word in a quote.
Speaker 1: It was reporting on a hate crime that had happened,
Speaker 1: and I guess the family of the victim wanted them
Speaker 1: to say what was said to the victim before. You know,
Speaker 1: the same with the ML's mom had to help them
Speaker 1: cask the funeral. It's like, we all gotta do this
Speaker 1: ship to ask. You want to see it, you gotta
Speaker 1: see it, and it's full horrid. Now, it did end
Speaker 1: up being a white reporter that they had say it,
Speaker 1: But I mean if I worked at BBC and I'm
Speaker 1: just in my office and my cubicle doing my ship
Speaker 1: and somebody walks and it's like, Yo, we got this
Speaker 1: report where we need somebody to say nigga, and we
Speaker 1: thought you'd be the perfect guy for the job that
Speaker 1: might make me feel some kind of way, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it depends on so many dynamics
Speaker 1: that they encounter in the workplace, Like if they have
Speaker 1: some races, motherfucker sayre like hey sambo, like I mean,
Speaker 1: like if they're already like if they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: some smells funny when you walk in the coffee room
Speaker 1: and like your whole like microaggressions, you know, like abound
Speaker 1: in your everyday experience. That might be the tipping point
Speaker 1: for me. Per an article in The Undefeated by Brando
Speaker 1: Semeo Starkey, he says that white folk indoctrinated them into
Speaker 1: accepting their supposed inferiority. These narratives illustrate the success of
Speaker 1: the campaign of mental terrorism. In no word conveyed the
Speaker 1: depth of this internalized oppression more than nigger. Black folte
Speaker 1: rescued the word from this moldering debris a virulently racist land,
Speaker 1: reclaimed it and renovated the slur into a celebration of
Speaker 1: black camaraderie. Defenders of contemporary usage of nigger. Repeat this.
Speaker 1: When this tale collides with reality, however, it shatters as
Speaker 1: a misreading of history. The current use of the word
Speaker 1: is owed less to white folk calling black folk nigger
Speaker 1: and more to black folk who thought they were niggers
Speaker 1: and said so. Black people have hurled the infamous word
Speaker 1: for nearly as long as white folks have exists within
Speaker 1: black sweet Now, because it existed within black sweech, then
Speaker 1: I think to about a little bit earlier, the uncomfortable
Speaker 1: truth must be confronted. Absolutely internalized oppression of those who
Speaker 1: called white men and black white men and women their masters.
Speaker 1: Nigger would probably not be part of black folks's lexicon.
Speaker 1: We black folks are, we claiming it not from bigoted
Speaker 1: white folks, from from our ancestors who sadly deemed their
Speaker 1: blackness as a badge of inferiority, Which I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: M as Motherfuck's been he got a quote from him
Speaker 1: later on. Um, but this takes us to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the hip hop in a while ago, you know almost
Speaker 1: ship at this point, over a decade ago, Nas the
Speaker 1: Rapper ran into some controversy with his now awesome and
Speaker 1: in my personal opinion, it's like one of you know,
Speaker 1: standout disk and his discography, which is his untitled album
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. Well, it had like a
Speaker 1: little controversy because he originally wanted to name it Nigger,
Speaker 1: and I mean he went on a campaign to name
Speaker 1: this ship like my next album is going to be
Speaker 1: called you know what I'm saying. So you had like
Speaker 1: a year or however long building up of just knowing
Speaker 1: that that was going to be the name of his
Speaker 1: next album. And it's like the closer that it got
Speaker 1: to what it was supposed to come out, the more
Speaker 1: he didn't debate it if a topic it became, he
Speaker 1: ended up not naming it that and decided to go
Speaker 1: with untitled for the project because he started having problems
Speaker 1: with Walmart saying that they weren't going to sell it
Speaker 1: and you know, other retailers, which is a whole other
Speaker 1: funny thing in itself because it's like, think of a
Speaker 1: time in music where whether or not Walmart sold your
Speaker 1: CD was determined Yea or Baker Break Like this is
Speaker 1: before the Internet was really like the main means of
Speaker 1: consuming music and ship. But you know, anyway, he ended
Speaker 1: up changing it, and uh, some of his thoughts in
Speaker 1: the matter. He said, it's all about the intent and
Speaker 1: which you mean, how it's coming off, the reasons why
Speaker 1: you're saying it. You know, if it's intent is angry
Speaker 1: and you're being ignorant, being mean spirited saying that word,
Speaker 1: it means the worst. If you just a couple of
Speaker 1: black guys in the street corner, doesn't mean it's a
Speaker 1: great thing. But it's not that they're trying to harm
Speaker 1: each other. I mean, I think he's kind of contradicting
Speaker 1: himself a little bit. He talks about the intent and
Speaker 1: then also how it's coming off and how they both matter.
Speaker 1: So I kind of feel like he's kind of a
Speaker 1: look a bit confused in this quote. It will hould
Speaker 1: up all the semantics, But I mean I understand like
Speaker 1: getting pressured. I mean, there's there's a constant battle between
Speaker 1: like the younger generations and like the elders. I think
Speaker 1: in the black community there's a special relationship and special
Speaker 1: reverence for our elders. And so I can see where
Speaker 1: he's coming from with like not liking the heat that
Speaker 1: he's getting when he's like a he's a very skilled
Speaker 1: artist and wanting to bring attention to like his artistry
Speaker 1: rather than like a controversy surrounding a word with which
Speaker 1: he has labeled his music. Brooklyn assemblymen Kim Jefferies suggested
Speaker 1: that New York's Controller withdraw eighty four million dollars from
Speaker 1: the state pension fund that has been invested into Universal,
Speaker 1: the parent company of Vendi, which put out the album,
Speaker 1: if the title wasn't change damn So. Chairman of Death
Speaker 1: Jam at the time, l A. Reid, stated that the
Speaker 1: label fully back NAS and his decision on name his album,
Speaker 1: and NAS also received her support from Ice Cube, Jay Z,
Speaker 1: Bishop Lamar Keys at the local j Revron comment A
Speaker 1: com at Man, Blue May Biasco, David Banner, jess A
Speaker 1: and Melimo. But and the kitchen in the kitchen fucking thing,
Speaker 1: so pretty much all of hip hop was behind him.
Speaker 1: In addition to the head of his label comments said,
Speaker 1: NASA is always bringing something new. Man, I've been smoking
Speaker 1: too much to do my common voice. I can't go
Speaker 1: down the outives. NASA has always been doing. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: NASA has always been a common said, NASA has always
Speaker 1: been bringing something new, bringing something for us to think about.
Speaker 1: He's one of the best ever. If it wasn't for Nas.
Speaker 1: A lot of cats, including myself, wouldn't be rhyming the
Speaker 1: way they do. So, I mean, I know the title
Speaker 1: of something behind what he's doing. He's making statements. That's
Speaker 1: something we need in hip hop. Last poets did it,
Speaker 1: Gil Scott Heron did it, Marvin Gay did it. We
Speaker 1: gotta keep making statements. What is the statement? Like, what
Speaker 1: is the point? Well, that's what this is. We talked
Speaker 1: about this, which is like, don't give every not everybody
Speaker 1: had like some huge master plan about ship. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I think if Nas were, if Nasa
Speaker 1: were a different rapper other than Nas, I think he
Speaker 1: would have just done it to be provocative, which there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with I make music to try to be provocative,
Speaker 1: to do it, you know what I'm saying. But I
Speaker 1: think because of the weight of being Nas that people
Speaker 1: might have felt that there had to be some deep
Speaker 1: meaning and reason for why he did it. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did get criticism from fifty Will Smith, of course, Al Sharpton,
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly, Oprah Winfrey, Jesse Jackson and unless we said
Speaker 1: before the double A CP wasn't too happy about this either.
Speaker 1: In fact that Al Sharpton said, brendan age where they're
Speaker 1: hanging nooses locking our kids up in Gina and Florida.
Speaker 1: We do not need to be degrading ourselves. We get
Speaker 1: degraded enough. I think we need artists to lift us up,
Speaker 1: not knock us down. And this is pretty fun. This
Speaker 1: nonsense man, that's stoopids stupid name doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Why would you name it that? Bruce straight to it.
Speaker 1: None of the explanations really seemed to make sense to me,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it made that much sense to
Speaker 1: him either, which is why he like quickly it was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, the different title ain't worth putting up
Speaker 1: the fight over. Let's stick into our music discussion for today.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to the N word used in
Speaker 1: music for the music discussion, pretty much it comes down
Speaker 1: to a lot of rap songs use the N word
Speaker 1: c N All right, everybody see you next week. I'm
Speaker 1: just joking. So one of the earliest recordings of the
Speaker 1: use of the word in a rap song the rapper
Speaker 1: Scooby D and his song Scooby Rap. Here's the passage
Speaker 1: and so in this context, and it sort of used
Speaker 1: prejoratively among African Americans that in the next line, he's like,
Speaker 1: stay back, suck U suck to stay back. I mean
Speaker 1: it's still in that context, is still kind of dude
Speaker 1: or fellow ish, I show these dudes where to go,
Speaker 1: you know, and that I think a better example what
Speaker 1: you're talking about is going to be on the next
Speaker 1: song that we got, which is Niggas and Flies by Scarface.
Speaker 1: Let's check your class, Thomas, motherfucking So he's kind of
Speaker 1: like lobbying critiques at niggas generally. Damn, this is a
Speaker 1: pretty scathing indictment establishment black people, It really is. That
Speaker 1: song is actually on the soundtrack to the movie Dead
Speaker 1: Presidents by the Hughes Brothers. What do you feel about
Speaker 1: his use of the word nigga in that context of
Speaker 1: like making that indictment, It constructs the sense of familiarity,
Speaker 1: like I know you bish. Yeah, Like I might not
Speaker 1: never met Clarence Thomas in my life, but if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call him a nigga, it's because, like I am,
Speaker 1: I'm asserting that I have this like this intimate knowledge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know who you are. I know who
Speaker 1: you are. Yeah, Yeah, that's good. So the next JOm
Speaker 1: we got is the track Niggas for Life by nWay.
Speaker 1: This song is literally about the topic of why do
Speaker 1: they use the word niggas so much in their rap music?
Speaker 1: A lot of it's the U and cheek. I get
Speaker 1: the impression the song is done more for laughs than anything,
Speaker 1: but you know, some of it is definitely coming from
Speaker 1: the heart as far as they're concerned. Let's check, because
Speaker 1: police always want to harrass me every time that I'm
Speaker 1: lent ron. First, I want to take note of the
Speaker 1: intro where you hear like the cascade of vocals of
Speaker 1: different black and white people disapproving of how often they
Speaker 1: use the word in their music and ship, and then
Speaker 1: you have that one like voice in the distance of
Speaker 1: like a racist white dude going the niggers right before
Speaker 1: the song starts. That's some ship. I think it's an
Speaker 1: interesting indictment of like the situation that it's like, no
Speaker 1: wonder I self identify by this pejorative if you look
Speaker 1: at everything that's happening around me, talking about I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to flip burgers, I'm not trying to get shot,
Speaker 1: dropping a liquor store, all these like these bleak circumstances
Speaker 1: around someone. It's like why wouldn't I Why wouldn't I
Speaker 1: call myself a nigger? You gotta keep in mind when
Speaker 1: n w A made that song, like adults weren't fucking
Speaker 1: with though, you know what I mean, Like older Black
Speaker 1: people weren't cool with why do I call myself a
Speaker 1: nigked They were literally steamrolling records in the streets on
Speaker 1: like writing protests to like stuff like this coming out
Speaker 1: and ship like that. So some of it is reactionary
Speaker 1: to to like being young men that suddenly find themselves
Speaker 1: famous and making money making the music that they're making,
Speaker 1: and then having this strong reaction from the elders in
Speaker 1: your community for a specific word, like something's wrong with
Speaker 1: you because you're using this word in your music, this word,
Speaker 1: as opposed to all the other things that you could
Speaker 1: be doing this word. This is where you draw on
Speaker 1: the line. Okay um. Next we have the title song
Speaker 1: off of NASA's now untitled album This Is and I
Speaker 1: Double g e Er off the album untitled They Double
Speaker 1: g E We all much more, but still what you
Speaker 1: ignore the obvious we are the slave. Okay. First off,
Speaker 1: I just want to say the song's fucking dope, regardless
Speaker 1: of whatever sucking Flow Imagery. The second verse guys, I
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start giving like more like strong opinions about music.
Speaker 1: But the second verse of this song is some of
Speaker 1: NAS's best work, point blank period. He goes off in
Speaker 1: the imagery talking about the ten foil Antenna's dyeing your
Speaker 1: hair at the cool aid. I die my hair with
Speaker 1: cool Ai when I was a little too, did you ah?
Speaker 1: But I think I mean in the framing, I guess
Speaker 1: this gives me it's funny that he went to war
Speaker 1: with the in double a C P over the title
Speaker 1: of this album, even that he is called a framing
Speaker 1: it like they call us this, but we're so much more.
Speaker 1: It's reaction. I mean, I feel like I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm both. I had to feel like. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much he really really was thinking about explain at
Speaker 1: least at the very least explaining the title before the controversy.
Speaker 1: But um, I think that if a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who reacted badly to it had actually listened to
Speaker 1: the album first, that I could have helped in like
Speaker 1: coming up with an opinion about the ship. You know,
Speaker 1: if you hear the ship first. I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: just yeah, yeah, I think this was the first song too,
Speaker 1: so it would have kind of put ship in a
Speaker 1: little bit framing if you had just like given the
Speaker 1: album like a minute long listen, yeah, at least a single.
Speaker 1: As soon as you put the name of the album out,
Speaker 1: people be like, So I originally had jay z is
Speaker 1: the story of o j on here, but then I
Speaker 1: was kind of gonna take it off because I was thinking, Man,
Speaker 1: all he does is say the word nigga over and
Speaker 1: over again, but there's not really any sort of context
Speaker 1: or insight that we can really get from the usage
Speaker 1: of it. But um, hey, that's not true the more
Speaker 1: I thought about it. But second, the opening line of
Speaker 1: the song, uh made me reference that Undefeated article that
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. Let's check out this still
Speaker 1: ni OJ like, I'm not black, I'm o Jay, don't
Speaker 1: funk with me, right, So going back to Brando Starkey's article,
Speaker 1: which by the way, was titled if you truly knew
Speaker 1: what the N word meant, our ancestors, you'd never use it.
Speaker 1: But he's got this passage in there that relates to
Speaker 1: this line. So he said. Perhaps more depressing, ironically, was
Speaker 1: that the circumstances sometimes led them to opt against calling
Speaker 1: a black person a nigger. William Porter stated that some
Speaker 1: of the Tennessee niggers were called free niggers. There was
Speaker 1: a colored man in Polanski, Tennessee, who owned slaves, a
Speaker 1: black man who kept others in bondage. He's a colored man,
Speaker 1: yet those who he kept in dage were niggers. I
Speaker 1: instantly thought of the moment from O J made an
Speaker 1: America documentary when a white woman saw black people talking
Speaker 1: to o J. And she uttered, look at those niggers
Speaker 1: sitting with o J. Simpson delights and hearing this because
Speaker 1: she quote knew I wasn't black. She saw me as
Speaker 1: o J. Porter's outlook matched that of both the racist
Speaker 1: white woman and the unspeakably racially deranged o J. I
Speaker 1: wonder if jay Z was making a reference specifically to
Speaker 1: that incident in that documentary or if that was just
Speaker 1: some other known thing about o J that he was referencing.
Speaker 1: And the last song is by a Long Island, New
Speaker 1: York rapper named all One. This song is called rush Hour,
Speaker 1: and what makes this really cool is all One's a
Speaker 1: white guy and this song is about the first time
Speaker 1: that he saw the movie Rush Hour, back when he
Speaker 1: was a kid, and he was geeking off of the
Speaker 1: line where Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker were like, what's
Speaker 1: up my nigua and were calls going to school the
Speaker 1: next day and repeating it with his friends and a
Speaker 1: black kid hearing it, and the incident that ensued afterwards.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting way to talk about approach the
Speaker 1: subject matters. If I had said some crass expletive, I'd
Speaker 1: like to say, story for and Genuoue, I just asked
Speaker 1: if she could help to clarify or help me understand
Speaker 1: the crime that I was called outside for. Meanwhile, he
Speaker 1: just stopped and cried more. He repeated the story of
Speaker 1: the rush hour line, of course, the one with the
Speaker 1: end mystery. I still didn't get it, so I said this,
Speaker 1: and I timidly admitted that I had mimicked indiscriminately and
Speaker 1: no one else had exhibited misery. That's when they explained
Speaker 1: this significance to me. Oh, I felt like a trotolosite
Speaker 1: honest I apologize, which moderately mollified his melancholy solemn eyes
Speaker 1: walked inside, locked my eyes on the hard tiled floor,
Speaker 1: shocked or bible stick and wonder how am my soft
Speaker 1: and bright tongue could turn on me and do so
Speaker 1: much hurt with one word and with the vein of ignorance.
Speaker 1: I tainted that little kid or exchange gave him his
Speaker 1: first racist experience, and I wondered, decades later who it
Speaker 1: resonates across the years he's lived. That Damn what a narrative.
Speaker 1: You love a good narrative wrap, you know, there's so
Speaker 1: few and far between, and when they're well done, they're
Speaker 1: well fucked. I love that, Like I love how he's
Speaker 1: he's definitely mastered his like spoken word sort of style,
Speaker 1: strong coffeehouse like spoken word, nive vibes. Yeah for real,
Speaker 1: like he yeah he he should be doing like woodstock
Speaker 1: or some ship. But what do you? What do you like?
Speaker 1: What do you? How do you? Uh? What's your reaction
Speaker 1: to the subject matter of the song of the story
Speaker 1: was that kid? No? I totally understand, Yeah, that the
Speaker 1: racial insensitivity of people that for that are too young
Speaker 1: to understand the experience of the people who are unlike
Speaker 1: them can imagine feeling a different way about something than
Speaker 1: they do because they're just emotional maturity is not yeah
Speaker 1: you know they're twelve. Yeah, I mean we're fortunate. I
Speaker 1: guess too, have had our main experiences with that word
Speaker 1: have been when we were really young, and it kind
Speaker 1: of being in the you know, cruel ignorance of children
Speaker 1: as opposed to how some other people deal it. I
Speaker 1: mean a mad Aubrey got called a digger right after
Speaker 1: he got shot, when he was laying on the ground bleeding.
Speaker 1: So perspective on everything, all right, So I thought we
Speaker 1: got for this week. Yeah, we gotta close it off
Speaker 1: with the rapping like we always do. Right, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be going check check. Yeah. We wait in the reparations.
Speaker 1: We wait in the reparations though, so yeah, yeah, check it. Now.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be my nemesis. This is what
Speaker 1: the premises. If you white, don't say the N word
Speaker 1: up in my premises, I would hate to whip your
Speaker 1: fucking ass like I'm the Genesis. Sorry, but I'm just
Speaker 1: old fashioned like the Genesis. If you want to say it, well,
Speaker 1: you know there's a prerequisite. Make sure that your skin
Speaker 1: is black at home, and you won't catch your brick
Speaker 1: stone to the full head. Not homie, we don't ever
Speaker 1: miss when my niggas break your wind shield. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get it fixed and it ain't so unique, So
Speaker 1: what your motive be? Trump got white folks saying nigga
Speaker 1: for they go to sleep. They want to arrest me
Speaker 1: because my skin doc is nestle and I'm short like PESHI.
Speaker 1: I can't help it. I'm a nerd till I'm dead.
Speaker 1: I'm screaming in white folks like I heard what you said.
Speaker 1: You niggas is too comfortable, be nervous. Instead, I'm making
Speaker 1: sure that you know that there's a word to regret.
Speaker 1: I'm running out of words in my head. I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for you. You gotta start. Let me get this second
Speaker 1: and the second. No, I gotta keep me rolling. Probably, uh,
Speaker 1: if you say nigger around me, we're about to be
Speaker 1: ill in my fucker don't care if you army are
Speaker 1: civilians about to come all up in your village and pillage.
Speaker 1: Motherfucker's know that I'd be spilling mad words because I
Speaker 1: got a crazy vocabulary. And if you don't like it,
Speaker 1: can tuck your dictionary or go and tell the god
Speaker 1: fairy godmother that you need another book cover on the
Speaker 1: textbook because I'm dropping knowledge. Motherfucker's know that I got
Speaker 1: it in my pocket. It's witten it all the time,
Speaker 1: like it's all locked up in my locket. I look
Speaker 1: at it so funny. Motherfucker's not that I'd be challenging
Speaker 1: these people to a comedy. Yeah, we are waiting on reparations.
Speaker 1: Hurry up, hr up, goddamn good night. Waiting on reparations
Speaker 1: as a production of I Heart Radio. Listen to Waiting
Speaker 1: on Reparations on the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.