Rhetorical Leaps
Niggas in Paris, I love that song. It's like I'm here - as my most base self, not dressed up to fit in with you and still ballin. I remember walking into Bev Hills hotel with Roc crew and feeling like "What you looking at? What? That's what I thought!":). And I'm middle class. Yes, we in Jerseys and sneakers, with a New Yorker writer in tow, and your kids want to be like us. Ball so hard... Like finding a Biggie "Live in London" LP from '95 at a record store in Amsterdam when I went to live there a decade later. Yeah we's here, black and ugly as ever.
Niggas went to paris and london and did not forget niggas. The London LP has Big shoutin to "south london" sayin how happy was "to see y'all niggas, I been lookin for y'all niggas since I been here." I love it and get all mushy thinking bout it. He was in London yo, like my parents (Black Muslims in London decades before - nuff respect), but yeah, our movements will not be circumscribed and we will come as we are.
That hyperbolic presence/performance, however lets magazines like Jackie think they can call our style, Niggabitch. I sincerely think it was meant to be hip, and edgy, and this editor did not know the ledge. And while I am happy they apologized and fired the editor, Europe did not have a civil rights movement or African American history courses in barbershops or at universities, a lot of people is ignorant and get their cues from our popstars. We play the victim when we have helped create the monster - and so I love Jay's 'N*ggas in Paris', but I'm also not boohooing over someone calling my style, niggabitch (Rihanna apparently called herself #NIGGA (an actual 'trending topic' (!!) on twitter a couple days before), it's schizophrenic. Let's transform these signifiers (I'm tired of letting this language rule me), truly rep the monster, re-imagine it, or lay it to rest ..
A New York Times blog urges us to Occupy Language (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/what-if-we-occupied-language/). One by showing how language is used as a means of social and economic control. but also showing that it is "not immutable" and we can reshape it re-contextualize it through movements like the "Occupy" one. There has long been debates over these terms and they continue to strike chords. But there have been some developments and why the almost hysterical reaction to the Dutch magazine seems somewhat a step back from a more nuanced discussion of these terms.
I sometimes think that Jay uses "niggas in paris" as a set-up. he's ultra aware of the word, still makes it the title although only mentions it once in the lyrics (yeah, one time in the entire song!). But dares you to "fine" him. Who knows what Jay's motives are, but brothers in paris does not confront the europeans/ the colonizers (of america too!) in the same way. You may have made me a "nigga", but your children have made me their god. This nigga's/ bigger's coming home to roost... "and you're gonna love me....." :)
http://www.egotripland.com/guy-singing-niggas-in-paris-on-nyc-subway/
on another note, this was letter I wrote to the editors of NY Times as a college student (that was published!) in 94 (I remember my german professor came up to me and said he had seen it - #fame!), self righteously as ever I attack Ice Cube, but it also speaks of Tribes' re-imagining of the word (in the negative), but taking linguistic and rhetorical leaps all the same:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/01/magazine/l-generation-rap-932698.html
posted by z.a.k. @ 9:52 AM
0 comments
