As a long time Nas fan I was trying not to have the reactionary dry heave at the announcement that his latest CD was going to be named Nigger. I wrote it off as a marketing stunt equivalent to 50 Cent beefing with a rapper weeks before his next project debuts. A proverbial grain of salt was sprinkled to help with the bitter taste. I told myself, “It’s about the music, forget the theatre around it. It’s gonna be dope, he’s just trying to get our attention.” However, after hearing “Be A Nigger Too,” I may have given Mr. Jones too much credit.
From the onset Nas keeps us off balance because it’s still not clear what side of this “Nigger” debate he really stands on. At times this song is a defense of the use of the word, at others an illustration of the life of a supposed “nigger” and an admonishment of those wanting to be “niggers” all at once. It’s the same enigmatic dance he’s dazzled us with for years that simultaneously has people calling him a genius and a hypocrite, and I think that’s just the way he likes it.
Nas attempts to take the wind out of the anti-N word factions by recycling old arguments that “there’s books published by Niggers…”(an off-hand reference to Dick Gregory’s Nigger… I hope) that “We all Africans, some Africans don’t like us anyway…” so that means ‘African-American’ should not be the preferred substitute. And when all else fails he simply tells his critics to “eat a dick.”
One mistake Nas makes is assuming that the fight against the N word is coming solely from his/our elders, which simply isn’t true. I’ve argued with my peers about the use of the N word for about as long as Nas has been MCing and where appropriate have erased it from the lexicon of publications I’ve edited. This is not an “old head” issue. However, any perceived failure of the Civil Rights generation does not justify the use of the N word by their children and grandchildren, but that is another blog for another day.
On the plus side Nas interjects some rather potent battle lines in-between his posturing, showing flashes of the brilliance that made “Ether” so dangerous: “…Don’t forsake us, you all are fake Bloods like movie make-up/ My flow tight as Tooty braces, who be hatin’ us?, I be on that state bus in shackles if my eight bust, cuz ya’ll some tellers, the opposite of bankers…” Tell ‘em why you mad, son. I feel you here. Why would they “still want to be a nigger too” if life is this hard for a brother? But then you lose me.
Saying things like “I’m not mad because Eminem said Nigger, cuz he’s my nigger/wigger/ cracker/friend, we’re all black within…” is absurd. Why excuse something that even Mr. Mathers acknowledged in public was wrong? If Sir Elton John sang: “I’m not mad Eminem said faggot because he’s my faggot/flaming fudge packer and we’re all faggots within…” his fans–gay and straight–would burn his piano in effigy. Slow down, Stans. I’m not debating Nas’ sexual orientation, just his logic. The power of a word is held as much in the user as in how it’s used, and of all people, one of the greatest MCs to touch a mic should understand that.
But maybe he does. Nas recently told a magazine that he stopped performing “Ether” because his feelings have changed, and that he’s talking about “a person that’s alive.” Those bars in “Ether” are filled with so much hate that he can’t bring himself to repeat them only seven years later. The word “Nigger” has an even longer history of hate. Just think about that.
You see, Nas, shouting out all your “Kyke niggers, Spic niggers and Chink niggers” is laughable. The usage of those words hasn’t been diminshed because racists stopped using them, they’ve been diminished because Latinos don’t call each other Spic, Jews don’t call each other Kykes and Asians don’t call each other Chink. It’s really that simple. If you want to lessen the impact of the word Nigger, try not using it. Leave the language of hate in the hands of the haters and focus on giving us good music.
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