The Shakurs

Joela is on the mix. That's a hot assist. They call me dope because when I spent that you gotta fix since the psychedelics and legal now that I gotta trip, what's the side? Is this a lot messed up? All right? What's going on? What's good? People? Dope knife? We are waiting on reparations. Hurry it up. So today we have

a statue for you another one. We are going to be talking about civil rights activists Assada Shakur, getting to her activism, her story if you haven't heard it, and we're also going to talk about her connection to hip hop and the legendary Tupac Shakur of whom she's the

godmother too. Interestingly, very little can we found online about the relationship of Tupac to his step on and godmother Asada, but um she was very much um a part of just like black revolutionary struggle in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. As we're Afenni Shakur, Mutula Shakur um Tupac's parents, we're gonna talk about how this sort of permeated the life of Tupac and sort of set him up for

the person that he was. In addition to detailing, you know, in specifics a lot about whose Asada was as this notorious figure that today is still being persecuted by the United States government. When did you first like become aware of Assata Shakur in your activism. I think around the time I started studying like abolition, Like when I first started like reading the work of ANGELA Davis and like realized, you know, like we in school get this very sanitized

version of what the civil rights movement was. We don't learn about the Black Panthers. You don't learn about people like angel Davis because they were doing crimes like they were they were breaking people out of jail, they were robbing Briggs trucks and like Pilofolice office and like crazy ship that you know, as like like genuine, genuine revolutionary activity. And so around that time is what, you know, what I learned about Angela Davis and her advocacy for UM

political prisoners. And that's what I learned about Asata and her advocacy for Asada. When Asada was imprisoned for a killing cholice officer. I think I first became aware of Assata Shakur, probably with the common song. I mean, we're gonna get into that later on in the episode, but I would have to say it was a common song

for as Sata. I think I was watching a hip hop documentary years ago and then I saw come and make note of it, and then I was remembered, Oh, yeah, that song was on that like Water for Chocolate album. So that was my introduction into her. I mean, like a lot of other you know people, I guess I kind of just assumed, oh, a side of Shakur, that's Tupac's mom, you know. So I kind of just had that idea in my head and ran with it until

I found out more about who she was. So yeah, We're gonna get get into that, but before we do, How's how's your week been? You know, she has been crazy. We've had like five, I guess now six shootings here in the last week or so. Last Saturday, like all police shootings or just shooting. Oh, just people just killing each other, Just people just killing each other. We had a twenty year old kid shot and killed last Saturday. This Saturday, there was a man who lost his life.

The suspect in that shooting was fifteen years old. And uh, surprisingly a few leaders are speaking out about it. I think because many folks kind of take it for granted, this assume that this is what life can be. But like in the last couple of days, I've been very involved in like reaching out to the families and the victims of the shootings. Um. I attended the funeral of the of E. B. Montana, who was killed last Saturday,

twenty year old rapper in town. And uh, it's interesting to me and speaking with these families what they think the solutions are. Like I gathered with them, I like helped you know, of Montana's family organized a candelie vigil and one of our community centers on Friday and speaking with people out there, they were like, we need to be investing in these young people. We need to be you know, these people don't internal jobs, ain't got no

programs to be involved in. And so it's interesting, like I think that like people in this discourse around policing recently, people like who aren't involved, who aren't impacted, who aren't who never lost anyone, are prescribing all these solutions like, oh, we need you know, uh more policing, We need all these things. You go talk to the people who lose family members that that's not even something that comes to

their mind. That's not even something that's a part of the conversation for them, And no one is and I don't think anyone is asking them what their opinion is.

And so it's just been like as we also approached like budget season, you know, it was like this time last year that like the fund, the police became a thing just thinking about just trying to show up for these families that are in a lot of pain right now and also think about like centering them and how we go about creating policy, but particularly for you know, Montana, Rest in peace, um beloved Young Rapper um here in Athens um who you know himself, had came out had

some gun charges and had warned out for his arrests, and so there's you know, in the media like kind of painting him as like, well he was no angel. But it's like, what do you do you think these kids are gonna do if you don't give them anything to believe in in this world? And so that's just been my world for the last like week or so. But then there's crazy ship happening everywhere. I mean, I mean,

i've gun violences. I don't know for certain that it's like on any sort of record pace, but it seems like shit is getting out of control. I mean, it's not just the mass shooting statistics, but like you have you know, individual every day like of occurrences of of gun violence that doesn't even get national coverage because not only is it just like part of the like ubiquitous cycle, but then it's like only two people died, so it's not a big story, or it's only a person here,

or just somebody got injured. All the all the shootings that happened, when people get injured that you never hear of. Remember the rapper Pop Smoke who died last year. Recently, it came out that the killer of him was a fifteen year old who saw him on Instagram and tried to get his watch and it's not And it's like, oh, you know, uh, like if we don't right, I think maybe a Frederick Douglas quote like it's easier to build strong children than repair broken men. But like it's I mean,

we're like the children are broken. Yeah, Like it's not even like oh and then they grow up and become adults and started doing crazy like the kids, and you fail to invest in them. That return in the lack of investment manifestly. It's just like these times that we

live in, everything is just accelerated as well. So you know, well, we're gonna we're gonna switch, We're gonna switch gears, and we're gonna get into this whole thing with a Sada Shakur and the amazing at times story of her life will be back with all of that and more after the jump. Let's talk a little bit about what I saw him was from her early life. Sada Aliba Shakur was born Joanne Debara Byron and Queens, New York in

nineteen and grew up in Walmington North Carolina UM. She began her involvement in political activism while attending Manhattan Community College and City College of New York UM and she recalled a conversation about communism with the African students at the spark of some of her revolutionary leanings. She said,

I never forget. I've never forgot that day. We were taught at such an early age to be against communists, yet most of us don't have the famous idea of what communism is, only a pool at somebody else tell them who his enemy, And I think it's a good point. She of course spent a short period of time with the Black Panther Party, organizing protests and community education programs.

She even was leading the Black Panther Party chapter in Harlem for a while, coordinating with the free breakfast program for children, free clinics, community outreach. She would eventually join the Black Liberation Army due to some dissolution and meant with what was going on in the Black Panther Party at the time, she said, with a few exceptions, be political education classes for party members turned out to be just the opposite. The basic problem stemmed from the fact

that BPP had no systematic approach to political education. They were reading from the Red Book, where they didn't know who Harry Tupman, Marcus Garvey or not Turner work. A whole lot of them barely understood any kind of history Black, African or otherwise. So that's something that I never really thought about in detail much. Is like that not everybody

was on the same page with everything. Yeah, I mean looking at the modern left like and like it, it's almost heartening to know that there were these schisms always of like people who found the organization's lacking and would move on to others. Or you know that there were these like like like even these figures and even these institutions that our memorialized so notoriously. It's just like just mind blowing legendary work that they did. Like it, We're

not perfect, and that it's almost it's almost hardening. It's like, oh, nope, you can make a lasting impact in history even if you don't have your ship. Tell me together some other stuff that I kind of found about this, but I never I didn't really find anything that she says specifically, but um, apparently there was some feeling on her part that there was a lot of macho ship going on

in the Black Panther Party at the time. Yeah. So then so she joined the Black Liberation Army or b l A, which was an underground revolutionary organization from nineteen seventy. It was kind of like the Black Panthers. It's composed to former members and also former members of another organization, the Republic of New Africa. But the group's mission statement was to take up arms for the liberation and self determination of black people in the United States, not fucking around.

So they had some principles that they kind of went by. So one that we are anti capitalist, anti imperialist, anti racist, and anti sexists too, that we must of necessity strive for the abolishment of these systems and for the institution of socialistic relationships in which black people have total and absolute control over their own destiny as a people. And then three that in order to abolish our systems of oppression, we must utilize the science of class struggle, develop the

science as it relates to our unique national condition. In our opening statement in court in nineteen SATA would say, the Black Liberation Army is not an organization. It goes beyond that. It is a concept, a people's movement and idea. The concept of the b l A arose because of the political, social, and economic oppression of black people in this country, and where there is oppression, there will be resistance. The b l A is part of that resistance movement.

The Black Liberation Army stands for freedom and justice for all people. In nineteen seventy, she was a doctor's assistant volunteering at Alcatraz Prison. At the time, there was a protest going on with some Native Americans about broken treaties and expectation by the U. S. Government. She went on to say, I will never forget the quiet confidence as they went about their lives calmly, even though they were under the constant threat of invasion by the FBI in U. S. Military.

They had many of the same problems we had, and for damn sure the same enemy. They were doing as bad as we were, if not worse. I didn't save any one was when she changed her name to Asada ballow skor. Asada is a West African name derived from the Arabic name Aisha said to me and he she who struggles Alshakerman thankful one in Arabic, all the following savior and your bum She said, the name Joanne began to irk my nerves in her autobiography, had changed a

lot and moved to a different beat. I didn't feel like no Joanne or no Negro in norma. I felt like an African woman my mind, heart, and soul. I'd gone back to Africa, but my name was still stranded

in Europe somewhere, which then prompted her change. Over the next few years, she would be charged with a slew of crimes, including two bank robberies in New York, the kidnap and murder of a drug dealer, an armed robbery during which she was shot in the attempted murder of a police officer in an ambush she was convicted of. None of these is all either acquittals or case dismissals,

which is interesting because that she is. But like the memory of her being charged with these crimes outlives the reality of her acquittals or case dismissals, like we will remember her. It's just like bad as like fucking crazy,

you know, doing crimes. Yeah, like outlaw, but like most of the ships she was you know, got dismissed, so she was acquitted for but anyway, and then also it's like the other thing too, is just like you know, if you just do a casual just casual little research, if you're like, you know, wanting to know who she is, that you know, most of what you're gonna find is about like this sort of stuff, you know what I mean. She was involved in this, and she was involved in that.

There was a shootout with this, and a shoot out with that, and it's like you have to dig like a lot harder to like actually find what it was. Obviously most of her life, you know, which was activism in in you know, I mean community service and stuff like that. Yeah, which then recalls for me, I mean, like I was talking about at the top the recent um, you know tragedy with this kid Montana where uh he you know, was allegedly involved in a shootout like a

week prior. He may have been in the car the car, may have been shooting in self defense in any regard, like he had warrants out because they thought he'd suspected his involvement. And so the front page of the newspaper on Sunday was you know, like slay and Rapper had Gonne warrant and you know charges warrant out for gun charges is um, despite the fact that, like it's not clear if he was involved in the crime. He may

even if he was in the car. He when i've been personal shooting, even in the person in the car

had been shooting, it may have been self defense. But the story that gets told is that he had warrants out for his arrest, which is very much un contrasted when we speak to his family or like when I attended his service yesterday, people talking about how he made TikTok challenges for kids, and he you know, would take out his neighbor's trash, and he would waived all the city bus drivers and all of these other things that like aren't his splashy and so don't get picked up,

and like the are collected, you know, and imprinted in our collective memory of who these people are. And then when those things do come to light, they don't really have to go back and correct both headlines because and then yeah, and then like yeah, nothing ever happens, and that's just like that what the memory remains. The FBI has Joint Terrorism Task Force was issuing nearly daily briefing

sashakur status and allegations against her. Years later, some police officers argued that her importance in the deal that had been exaggerated by the police, with one saying that they themselves had created a myth to DEMONI Schaker because she was educated, young, and pretty. Doc documentary evidence suggests that Shakur was targeted by the investigation named Chez Rob, which was attempted to hook Asada Shakur to virtually every bank robbery or violent crime involving a black woman on the

East Coast God Damn. Although named after Shakur, Chez Rob, like its predecessor Nu Kill, was not limited to her. So they were just like just coming for her regardless. I mean, it's almost like a parody of what you would have, you know what I mean, Like it almost like if somebody just told you it, it would sound like, no, that's like a movie, you know, But it's like, no,

that sounds like some conspiracytion. I mean, a lot of the stuff of the FBI do that is true, Like when in hindsight, like a lot of that Jagger Hoover FBI stuff is literally the plots of movies that have been made. So then came the infamous shootout at the New Jersey Terrified. According to the official New Jersey Police UH spokespersonan Asada was on our way to a new hideout in Philadelphia and heading ultimately for Washington, and a book in the vehicle contained a list of potential b

l A targets. She testified the heading to Maryland for a waitress drop skor and her two associates were stopped by state trooper for a broken tail light. Haven't we heard that before many many times? And the result was a shooting that left the trooper, Werner Forster, dead and one of the men that Asada was with, Zaid Malik Shakore. He was killed and inside of herself was shot in both arms and her shoulder. For The Guardian, it was in hospital that she first met Letics Hines, the National

director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers. In the history of New Jersey, no woman, pretrial, detainee or prisoner has ever been treated as she was continuously confined in men's prison under twenty four hour surveillance, without adequate medical attention and exercise, he said. Cursed Defense team filed a civil suit against the state, charging that her condition for cruel and inhumane. She was held for more than a year in solitary confinement in the basement of Middlesex County

stale that they held there. In the men's present, oh yeah, oh oh yeah, oh yeah, she ascribed to all her conditions a unifying fame. Oh god, the smell. I don't care what jail had been in. They all stink. They all have a smell on like any smell on earth, like blood and sweat and feet and open sores. And if misery had a smell like she was in carded into nine seven when she finally got to have her case in court for The Guardian, there's much evidence to

suggest the trial wasn't fair. Transcripts in the jury selection show that at least two jurors expressed prejudice before the start of the trial. There's evidence of the offices of the defense team were being bugged, and materials relating to her case went missing from the home of the lawyer Stanley Cohen, were later found with New York City police. They're not even like they weren't even trying, you know. Ship um Hines called the trial allegal lynching in a

kangaroo court. The defense could not get an expert witness to testify. The Core noted it was obvious I didn't have one chance in a million of receiving any kind of justice. She testified, holding onto a photo of her daughter, conceived with fellow b l A member Kamayu Sadiki while they were both in jail and born in nineteen seventy four. The jury reached a verdict out of twenty four hours.

She was found guilty on all seven counts. As Haines explained, under New Jersey law, if a person's presence at the scene of a crime can be construed as aiding or betting the crime, that person can be convicted of the substantive crime itself. Shakur was handed a mandatory life sentence. So while in president Shakura was introduced liberation theology, which is a synthesis of Christian theology and socioeconomic analyzes that emphasize the social concern for the poor and political liberation

for a press people's actual like Jesus type stuff. Yeah, it's like Jesus, but like real Jesus was like, yeah, Homie was hanging out with the homeless and prostitutes and was like murdered by the state, And like, what does this mean for us today in terms of how we enact you know, a good life as a Christian, to upend and disrupt oppression of various kinds. Here's something interesting

I found on Wikipedia. Shakur was identified as a political prisoner as early as October eighth, nineteen seventy three, by Angela Davis and in April third, nineteen seventy seven the New York Times advertisement purchased by the Eastern Coalition of Human Rights. An international panel of seven jurist was invited by Hines to tour a number of US prisons and concluded in a report filed with the United Nations Commission for Human Rights that the conditions of her solitary confinement

were totally unbefitting of any prisoner. Their investigation, which focused on alleged human rights abuses of political prisoners, sided Shakur

is one of the worst cases of such abuses. So it's interesting that her particular predicament then led to this larger indictment of the prison system and the practice of solitary confronement in the United States, which is totally boring if you ask me, but so nineteen seventy nine, three members of the b l A walked into the Clinton Correctional Facility for women with guns and stick of dynamite, took two guards hostage, commandeered two vans, and broke Asada

out of prison and what coopering? Well escape the guards. To be clear, we're left in the parking lot and no I was injured, but they just broke her ass out. They were like, y'all keeping my girl, and Saul say, pretty daring, you know what I think? Do you think that like with this um new surgeons of like black cinema, do you think we're gonna get like a definitive of Satisha core movie? Do we not have one yet? I

don't think we do. I can't recall one at least nothing that's that you know that's like popping the mind that's like worth noting right now. I can't really think of one, but just just you know, getting to this part of the story, it's like, oh, yeah, now I need to see this filmed. Like what what was the stick of dynamite for? What? Do we Apparently there was a there was a documentary Joannes that came out and

came out in two nine. Uh. I don't know a lot about it, but but I think more of what we're talking about in the line of like, yeah, exactly like or like you know, Denzel cast like you know, a little bit of a little bit of you know, fiction and a little bit of historical, you know, one of those blurring the line sort of, you know. So

she was at large fugitive for years after that. In New York, three days after her escape, more than five thousand demonstrates more than five thousand demonstrators organized by the National Black Human Rights Coalition carried signs with slip with her name on the slogan. At that rally, a statement from Shakur was was circulating, condemning the U s prison conditions and calling for an independent New African state. She was granted political asylum in Cuba, and it's been living

in exile there ever since. Over the decades, there have been four or five attempts to try to extradite her back to the United States, with the last being in June two thousand seventeen, when President Donald Trump gave a speech canceling the Cuba the Cuban Thaw policies of its predecessor,

Barack Obama. A condition of making a new deal between the United States and Cuba was the release of priltical political prisoners and the return of fugitives from justice, Trumps specifically calling for the return of cop killer Joe and Chest But I remember when that all went down, and that's cool because it kind of let's just transition into our music discussion a little bit. But I remember when

that all went down. There was like a brief period of time where a bunch of outlets were like posting it as Trump goes after Tupac's mother, and that that's all they were saying. People don't even like that. They were really like like digging in it like that. I guess they were just hearing Shakur and then I guess seeing that there was a connection with between the two and there was like a slue a headlines that was like Trump going after Tupac's mother. I remember waking up

that day and looking on Twitter. It's like wait, wait what huh. But now it's transition to talking a little bit about Tupac and the revolutionary uh. Just like bedrock of who he became. That echo is very much a lot of what we have learned about Asada to this point.

So Asada was tupac step on and godmother. Not much is known publicly about their relationship, and though they were not related by blood, much of her revolutionary activity in Stance can commonly be found in the Hikert family bloodline. Tupac's birth mother, if Finney, was also an active member in the Black Panther Party. She wrote the Black Panther Party newsletter Panther Post, and led a successful campaign that

tricked the FBI to believe the party was fading. In April nineteen sixty nine, she and a number of other Black Panthers were arrested and charged several counts of conspiracy to bomb police stations and other public places in New York. Sure those were real charges. When the trial came, A Finny, who was pregnant with Tupac at the time, who had not attended law school, and who was facing down a three hundred year prison sentence, chose to represent herself in court.

One month before giving birth to Poc. She was acquitted of all charges. Pap was very close to his mother, who sometimes also served as his publicist, and he famously dedicated his song Dear momitor A Finny and her children moved to Baltimore, Maryland during his time at the Baltimore School for the Arts in the late eighties, Tupac became attending meetings in the Baltimore branch of the Young Communist League USA, which he had since renamed itself too, which

has since renamed itself the TUPACSA Corp Club in his honor. Unfortunately, we could find little about his time with a Young Communist League and the research, but I think the influence as well as his time with the Black Panther had been heard in his anti imperialist class. Consciously so. If Any's first Hump husband, La Mumba, was a leader of the Black Panthers in Harlem and married if Any nine.

Their marriage unraveled after the revolution. Their marriage unraveled after the revelation came forth that La Mumba was not Tupac's biological father. In the aftermath, if Any married Mutula Shakurry, Lamumba's adopted stepbrother. Mutula was politically active with the Revolutionary Action Movement, a US based revolutionary black nationalist group that applied the philosophy of Maoism to conditions of black people

in the United States. He later joined the new the Republic of New Africa that we referenced earlier to the Black Nationalists and separatist group that sought reparations as well as to establish an independent black majority nation in the southern United States. Mutula shared a close bond with Cock, and together they wrote the famous Code of Thug Life,

a set of rules discouraging unprovoked violence between gangs. Mutula was currently serving a sixty year prison sentence for his involvement in the ninety and eighty one robbery of a Brinks armor truck, in which Matulu several other members of the Black Liberation Army, in coalition with four members of the radical left organization of the Weather Underground, stole one point six million dollars, killing a guard and two police

officers in the act. Interesting fun fact, another conspirator in the robberty another conspirator in the robbery, Kathy Buddin, is mother of Chess Budden, who was in two thousand nineteen elected the District Attorney of San Francisco. Damn, it's a fucking small world when you're robbing Brace trucks. Damn. Yeah,

that's I mean, that's a crazy story. Yeah, I mean, and so I think and I think it it speaks to the fact that like under like you know, neoliberal and the conservative policies of the you know, seventies and eighties, a lot of people, you know, you either became a revel luctionary or you became a criminal, or the line between you know, you became a song or the line between them was very blurred. Like what was the difference between being a revolutionary and be a thug? If this is,

like if undermining the state is what its mean? You know, if if this is, you know that they're engaging in very similar activities, arguably to different ends. With when on the one end, if you're like you know, song life for the accumulation of capital for you know, getting yourself out of poverty, for life refuse set versus like the other group of folks that we're shooting police officers in crazy ship like that, but with the aims of like

establishing a separatist black state and like things is. And so I think, like in the larger conversation that we have on the show about the relationship between hip hop and politics, like I think studying the lives of if Any in Utulou and the Sada show us like the many ways that the activity of both hip hop and revolution um overlap. And yeah, and I think that it's also good just in a historical context to not not

whitewash events or eras and things like that. It's like the Civil rights movement as we know it to be wasn't like every day was that I have a dream speech. You know what I'm saying. It's like like it involved like thousands of people like with you know, hundreds of individual stories of how people were like contributing to that whole fight, and not all of it was pretty you know what I'm saying, like obviously, And that's that's another theme that I think we're going to continue to explore. Um,

but let's get into like the direct music discussion. Oh, you know, just talking about that whole thing with Tupac. Fun fact about me. My godmother is May Jamison, who was the first black woman in space the more you know, also on Star Trek. Yeah, she was also the first real life astronaut on Star Trek. I think that's the trivia. I love that in my response, like, oh, it's not impressive enough to me that she went to motherfucking space. I'm like, but whatna starting? Alright, so I don't have

a cool godmother story. I'm sorry, but you have so many cool stories about I just got that one. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty. It's pretty. But yeah, let's turn to look a little bit about look at some of ASADA's impact on hip hop music as well as the revolutionary ideology so that she, if Annie and others shared trickled into the music of Tupacs. So the first song that we're going to talk about is the two thousand. I guess

the only way to describe it as an epic. It's a six minute long epic song by Common called Song for Asada. It's off of his album Like Water for Chocolate, produced by James Posner. Let's check that out real quick. Put Mason, the eyes threaten, the blast, my race still things got still open. As for you last season next to a best friend who got killed, commons words about it. He said it stemmed from me just reading her autobiography. I read the book two or three times. I went

down to Cuba. I had to feel every element I could to get so I could write that story. Yeah, he talked about making this move until it's freedom for all those who are oppressed, all those in struggle, and then gets into like in very very graphic detail, you know, the gunshots firing, laying in a puddle of blood and blood bubbling from her chest, and you know the feel of like the gunshot, like the open wound of the gunshot, um, you know, before she was later questioned by the police.

Like it's very you know, it's like very viscerally first person, not vivot. Like the thing that it's stands out to me is obviously like the length of it, because you know, you don't really see too many six minute long rap songs, even when it's about something serious, you know, and we there's decades and decades to discuss what we were just talking about. How oh that story is so wild that somebody should make a movie of it, you know, or is there a movie of it? And this is kind

of the hip hop version of that, you know. It's it's a very vivid, very detailed and visually so recounting of the story that we just told you guys all in um the course of this episode. It's kind of like I did this Ted talk thing not too long ago, and it was like about how when you rap lyrics seep in more in in information when presented as rap, can you know, be retained easier and be ingrained in

the mind more. And I think the song kind of you know, proves that because like this is like a summary of our whole episode just now in the six minutes, but it's like a dope to it. Yeah, you can listen to this. You all should have just gone listen to songs for Rosada to completely honest our apologies for listing your time. So what you got next? So you know, she gets a shout out on public enemies rubble without

a pause. But I think that turning to look at some of the influence of Black Panther and other black radical ideology and the music of Tupac is it's really interesting regularly if you look at keep your head up, you know, which we all know, but then sort of looking at it through the lens of the influence of strong black female leaders in Tupac's life and then sort of gives more context to like when he says some say the black of the barrils, we have the juice

to say, the dark of the flesh, of deep of the roots. I gave holl it to my sisters on well payer Tupac hairs if don't nobody else care, you know, you know, encouraging women to dry your eyes, never let up, keep your head up, and not accept the disrespect of black men in our community who may not have seen like the what's how much I say, man, I've exposed to like the power of like, you know, truly strong black leaders in the way that he was in his

young life. I think it's one of those interesting things about Tupac that unfortunately, just like a lot of things in history, gets lost because when people pass away, it's like the lot of the imagery of him that people that sticks with people is like the wild like the dude getting in trouble that people don't realize the Tupac is a guy that was raised by women, that like cared very much about his sister and was like really, you know, for for all the contradictions that rappers have,

I don't think I don't think that there was like any like uh. I mean, I guess there's there's definitely misogynistic Tupac lyrics, but not like de human I seeing like misogynistic Tupac lyrics that makes sense. I mean, we could definitely find worst examples. Yes, we could definitely find like the worst examples. So White Man's World was a ninety kid came out September. Um, it's it's a Outlaws number e D. I mean provided some background in permation

on the song. And so it's a personal record. It's like an open letter to his mother and his sister. It's like he's writing from jail and just apologizing for a lot of ship at we're all trying to grow up and change figures out. A lot of people don't remember that he you know, he's only twenty five. At the time, he was still a kid. Um and so um, this is sort of like a letter to his family of like, YO, apologize, but in it it's got an interesting couple of lines um about like one of the

lessons of never falling for riches, apologizing to his true sisters. Um, far from bitches. Um that they helped, you know, help me raise my black nation. Reparations are due, and that it's so true caught up in this world, I took advantage of you. But tell them babies how I love them, precious boys and girls born black and most white man's world.

So there's like hinting at like the ways that underlike hint under the boot of like racial capitalism, like we get pitted against each other, like the black men versus black women. Um, you know, black men versus black men, lower class wicks versus the you know, lower class blacks when you know, and we're falling for the riches we're when really, uh, we're all valuable and really if we got our fair share, you know, we could rise up. And not dealing was one of those uh posts songs

after he died. It's one of the earlie songs. I always wonder um because a lot of the thing with like a lot of those songs to me that's always stuck out is like none of that stuff feels like rushed. It's usually like a lot of it is the type of songs that you have to think about, you know what I'm saying, Like as far as like that, you would imagine somebody who's writing it has to think about. It doesn't feel like, oh, this is just some bullshit

that I'm doing in the studio. It's like really still like politically charged or very emotional songs and stuff like that that he did at some point when he was still alive by like the tens, just he just did like albums and the album's worth of songs like these that are hidden gems throughout because I have never even like thought about this ship. I've heard this album a couple of times back in the day, but I've never

even recalled this song. And this is like kind of following on the same themes that he was going when he was making Dear Mama. It's like that same sort of uplifting like, you know, like uplifting black women in the community even though they're not getting their proper due respect from everybody else. Sort of vibe that that song had to it. And then our last uh, especially on

a song it's a poem. I didn't know that Tupac released a book of poetry that poems that he wrote between Nights and nine and Night to any One Um published by It's like through MTV Books. I don't know MTV printed. Didn't about that. I mean, I remember that, I remember that book The Rose that Grew from Concrete, but I didn't I didn't know published by MTV Books.

And so I guess most Death did an interpretation of a Tupac poem that in the original evokes Black Panther Party for self Defense Etho and the pad and the Panther is she just own um? When they talk about can you see the Pride of the Black Panther as he grows in splendor, and Gray's top one obstacles placed in the way of the regression of I don't think

I ever heard that ship before. Again, like I knew about this book, I didn't know that they put out a whole album where different artists were doing interpretations of it though. But that's something that I've kind of always wanted them to just rappers to start doing in general.

It's like, I think cats should not be afraid to do covers in hip hop the way they do another forms of music, because you know, like a rock band can be like, hey, we want to give a shout out to Smashing Pumpkins and then do their interpretation of a Smashing Pumpkin song. But how come, you know, like, how come you can't get like me Gooes doing their version of a Ludicrous song or something like that. Like

I would want to see that. I would want to see one of these new rappers like give a shout out to DMX and do their version of rough Rider's Anthem or something like that. So this is fresh. I gotta check this out. That's no learn something today. Yeah, we are going to be back with you next week. What are we gonna do next week? Do we know yet? I don't know. It's gonna be a mystery. It's gonna be a mystery. But whatever it is, it's gonna be dope.

But you know how we always close it off. We gotta get that beat so that we can spit some rhymes. Joe my good man. Can we get a instrumental? Oh? Oh wait, no reparations, Wait, no reparation. Got it? I thought the market in me would be that simple, that single. Let's get linked. What to be a sex symbol? I said, I got it's actually I'm delectable, but intellectually on my Jetta cheese for cholesterol. Hella, hella elevated. You are lowell and I look well. I bet you seven cents to

be there this later. I bet your thirty seventh cents. A thorny feminists about the time that we will recoint it femininity. That's funny. Enemies from the sender ravenus to do what the tendency? If you're looking for honey, lovench, tenderly and the sheets, Yes again, mother fuck, I'm frenzied indusprit. Not a lot of mcs to try to rock to this. I say I'm dope. You perceive that as confidence. I got green plant seeds like a botanist, and I got speed.

You're gonna need that rabotan Nick the rocial Concrete. I do it like to Pocalypse and neat these rappers like the chocolate Chip. I could not resist hit the pressure points until you call me spotting ship waiting a reparation certified to be rocking there. Yeah, yeah, it's like dope dope, dope dope. Hey, my name's Dope Knife. You are waiting on reparations next week. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts