Andy Hutchins: Why Gwyneth Paltrow Should Just Say “Nuh,” Jay...

Jun 5, 2012
20 notes

Why Gwyneth Paltrow Should Just Say “Nuh,” Jay Smooth (Ill Animal or AnimILL or something)

I wanted this video here because I want every Ill Doc video here. The rest of this is stuff I’ve had rattling around in my head for a while; feel free to tell me how I’m grievously wrong and so on, because I really do want others’ thoughts on this.

As a white person, I feel like I have no place to use or censor others’ use of nigger/nigga/pick your favorite slur of the ossified white patriarchy — the reason I have always used it when transcribing lyrics and tweeting lyrics and writing about the lyrics and so on is because it is what people are saying, and I care about accuracy, and censoring a word feels like erasing, to me; it probably always will, unless I hear a compelling case that discussing music that is steeped in an experience that has made many, many people feel okay with reclaiming that slur as a quasi-term of endearment is better done while high-stepping around that slur (I am open to the existence of this case) — and I don’t use it except in the context of discussing it, not that that’s the point. But these controversies that flare up all the time about people using this word and others tend to focus more on the individual(s) using it (I’m guilty here, too) and not the DECADES AND CENTURIES OF HATRED AND OPPRESSION that made it a word that hurt people.

“Niggas in Paris” being as great as it is has something to do with how conflicted Jay and Kanye are about it: Jay’s “I’m shocked, too, I’m supposed to be locked up, too / If you escaped what I escaped, you’d be in Paris getting fucked up, too!” reveals some wonderment at being as successful as he is, and Kanye’s “Fish filet” line gets at how well he observes class, especially class conflict, and his “What’s drugs, my dealer?” bit shows that he’s playing with words, as rappers do, so there are things going on at the carnival, soundtracked by the hell-bound Hit-Boy beat, but it’s almost so enjoyable that the subtext doesn’t really get across.

How much fun is it to be Jay-Z and Kanye in Paris? A ton, certainly. But they’re still, of course, “Niggas in Paris,” just like how, in Kanye’s old “Even if you in a Benz, you still a nigga in a coupe” line, a fancy car doesn’t mean you’re not black, and I think that’s something that Francois Hollande affiliates definitely picked up on when using “Niggas in Paris” as a campaign rallying cry, even if Pitchfork’s Laura Snapes didn’t quite get it: yes, there are French songs that may better represent the temperament of the youth culture in France, and yes, picking this song distracts some people, but I think one of the fucking points of the song is to draw attention to the idea that people of color, even outrageously wealthy ones, could still be niggers in Paris. Calling that a “cheap stunt” seems sort of ignorant of how easy it would have been for Jay and Kanye, knowing full goddamn well that they had a banger that would go on to be a top-10 hit, to call the song “Ball So Hard” or simply “Paris”; putting “Niggas” first and foremost in the title was always supposed to be spotlighting it, I think.

In any case, America’s pretty affirmatively demonstrated that it cannot competently discuss the intersection of what led to nigger being a slur and the forces that are taking it beyond that — I’m gonna go ahead and blame systems that have eroded our ability to teach and sustain critical thought and enabled us to ignore our history for that — and I was never really all that hopeful that it would really get discussed, and I’m sure that a white man is not the guy who would lead that discussion most effectively, but damn if I don’t think that discussion would be valuable. “Niggas in Paris” could have been a good starting point.