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