Dec 3, 2022
When White Folk Take Our Words
White People Cannot Say The N Word Even During A Song
Lil John Snap Your FingersThis is one of the few songs that aren’t about who is a better rapper or man, and I wonder often if they even remember how the art of battling during music got started because today someone asked if we could stop calling marijuana, marijuana because it’s “offensive” and “Triggering.”
First off Fuck off. No, we can’t, and here’s why.
“Mary, Do you wanna?” Became Marijuana, as a codeword for those who wanted to smoke weed in the 20s. Like the history of rap music, we’ve forgotten where we were and why we got started, as Black folk and we really need to stop that shit.
AAVE is its own entire language, it’s a mix of African dialects and hidden secret words that don’t exist anywhere else. The reason that you don’t see it being used on social media is specifically that Black folk about five years ago had a long conversation and decided to stop using it so that white folk couldn’t adopt it. Literally, this actually happened.
Because white folk adopt everything and act as if they invented it. Box braids to the saggy pants.
There are ways that Black folk behave, dress, and speak, that you will never understand, so when you ask if we can take away a word that YOU Don’t like, ask yourself where that word comes from before you try to destroy it.
Too often Black folk has let — yes let — white folk steal our culture because we thought representation was good even if it weren’t Black folk representing us. Then we started to realize that the same people representing us were also capitalizing on that representation without spreading out any of the wealth.
Enter Rap Battles.
Too many rappers grew up being raised by mothers with addictions or fathers who weren’t there. I did, I’m a writer though so maybe to this point I don’t count. Either way, we struggled to know who we were, and who we could be.
In the 20s and 30s it was Jazz music that people flocked to in droves, but as music evolved and more and more artists became “Activated” we ended up going from this:
To This:
And not because we wanted this song to exist, but because we NEEDED…let me repeat N E E D E D this song, this particular song to exist. Because Miss Etta James would be incredibly proud to see how far women have come. Cardy B is a singular talent who doesn’t give a fuck about what Black women are supposed to be. She just is. Amazing.
Rap battles were not about talking about who was better, they weren’t meant to, not when Wu-Tang started rapping. They were designed to remind the world that BLACK folk were strong, had been through hell, and deserved to have a chance at freedom, but y’all didn’t listen so enter Cardi B who got it right.
Girls were supposed to be quiet and calm and well-behaved back in the 20s, but they got raped and beaten for carrying marijuana, only and yes ONLY because white girls hung out in the same places as Black girls. And when the cops showed up, good white girls were sent home while bad Black girls were beaten and chased through the street by white cops because they weren’t safe.
For context white girls in the 20s wanted to be where mary jane was, and that was often in clubs where Black folk hang out. Until the raids.
This shit still happens. I was raped, by cops who let it happen. So don’t tell me that we’re going to change our language, become less militant, or become less loud, because YOU’RE uncomfortable with OUR words.
We communicate through music and have done so since the days of enslavement.
Our songs are a road map to freedom, and when Snoop, Dre, Ice T or Ice Cube invent, or spread new words it’s not for white folk to just start singing.
We know what they’re talking about because we’ve read their biographies, we’ve lived in the same communities, and we’ve seen the same shit. Heard the same gunfire at night, in the daytime, down the street.
Many people swear the first rap song was Rapper’s Delight, but this was one of them actually:
It’s a poem, played to music. The Black folk used to tell their white counterparts that singing made the men and women happy and thus work harder, but the truth was that this is what’s called a Slave Song.
_EDIT_
Nerdy me. I believe this is an example of a “field holler.” No matter what the words were (and I’m not saying they didn’t have hidden meanings) workers used the rhythm so that they worked in unison. For example, in the film, “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” Lazarus is used to show this.
These are the lyrics to this song.
Lyrics:
Well, the high sheriff
He told his deputy
Want you go out and bring me, Lazarus
Well, the high sheriff
Told his deputy I want you go out and bring me Lazarus
Bring him dead or alive, Lawd,
Lawd Bring him dead or alive
Well the deputy he told the high sheriff
I ain’t gonna mess with Lazarus
Well the deputy he told the high sheriff
Says I ain’t gonna mess with Lazarus
Well he’s a dangerous man Lawd,
Lawd He’s a dangerous man
Well then the high sheriff, he found Lazarus
He was hidin’ in the chill of a mountain
Well the high sheriff, found Lazarus
He was hidin’ in the chill of the mountain
With his head hung down Lawd, Lawd
With his head hung down
Well then the high sheriff, he told Lazarus
He says Lazarus I come to arrest you
Well the high sheriff, told Lazarus
Says Lazarus I come to arrest you
And bring ya dead or alive Lawd,
Lawd Bring you dead or alive
Well then Lazarus, he told the high sheriff
Says I never been arrested
Well Lazarus, told the high sheriff
Says I never been arrested By no one man Lawd,
Lawd By no one man
And then the high sheriff, he shot
Lazarus Well, he shot him mighty big number
Well the high sheriff, shot Lazarus
Well he shot him with a mighty big number
With a forty five Lawd,
Lawd With a forty five
Well then they take old Lazarus
Yes they laid him on the commissary gallery
Well they taken poor Lazarus
And the laid him on the commissary gallery
He said my wounded side Lawd, Lawd My wounded side
Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl
