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'What Up, My Obama?'
Rapper Jim Jones talks to The Daily Beast’s Touré about how the new president-elect inspired him to clean up the language in his music.
Jim Jones is a Harlem rapper with lots of stubble and sleepy eyes. While he’s not a gangster rapper, he’s far from what you’d call a “conscious” rapper. In other words, he’s not the type of person you’d expect to see embedding himself in a sweeping societal change, but sometimes flowers grow up through the concrete. Jimmy recently co-wrote and starred in an off-off-off-Broadway play called Hip-Hop Monologues: Inside the Life and Mind of Jim Jones, in which he’s almost killed during an impromptu dice game. (I hate it when that happens.)
I recently interviewed Jimmy about the play while sitting on the lip of the stage, and toward the end of our talk, I asked him how he felt about Obama’s victory. Since Election Day, every conversation I have eventually turns to Barack Obama and our emotional reactions to this American epiphany. Jim confessed that the election inspired him to drop the word “nigga” from his vocabulary—where it was a nearly ubiquitous presence—and replace it with “Obama.” He gave me a few examples: “What up, my Obama?” “Yo, did you see them Obamas last night?” “Now that’s a real Obama.”
“Now that’s a real Obama.”
I was blown away. Black men have used nigga for more than three decades as a way of expressing a certain gallows humor. It is a way of saying, “Hey, if America thinks we’re the national boogie monsters, then fine, we are. Boo!” It stems from a peculiarly black sense of the macabre. But the election has done more than just usher in a black president. It’s begun creating a new America where black people feel like the country perhaps doesn’t hate us the way it once did, and black men no longer feel a need to identify ourselves as America’s monsters.
If words have power, and the slang we use says something about the people we are, then Jimmy’s linguistic U-turn indicates a very powerful shift: away from self-describing as niggas (rebellious, angry, ignorant, hunted), and toward self-describing as Obamas (cool, intelligent, humble, powerful). Away from a self-appellation that reminds us of how America has wronged us, and toward a self-appellation suggesting that we are all reflections of, and extensions of, a shining example of black excellence.
Change is on the way.
Touré is the host of BET’s The Black Carpet and the host of Treasure HD’s I’ll Try Anything Once. He is the author of Never Drank the Kool-Aid, Soul City, and The Portable Promised Land. He was a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, was CNN’s first Pop Culture Correspondent, and was the host of MTV2's Spoke N Heard. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times.
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Touré is a columnist for The Daily Beast. He's also an NBC contributor and the author of Never Drank the Kool-Aid, Soul City, and The Portable Promised Land. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, was CNN's first pop culture correspondent, and was the host of MTV2's Spoke N Heard. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times.
Well, I'm using it from now on, especially since I couldn't use the other since I'm white.
'Bama, what?
"...and toward self-describing as Obamas (cool, intelligent, humble, powerful)."
Humble?!?!
When has "humble" ever been used to describe The One???
Raindog - Obama is incredibly humble by my standards. I have never once heard him say anything but this victory belongs to his supporters and not to him, that he was not elected for his own sake but because of the desire for change in the national electorate. He has always given the credit to the people. That he is a man of such charisma that the media flock to cover him, well, that's not arrogance...that's just being fly.
Very good piece Toure!
True story: one of my daughter's schoolmates, a young man who does what most young men do these days - wear their pants half off their bottoms - after seeing Obama in his suit and thinking he looks "fine!" - said: "Obama looks so sharp all the time, especially in those suits, I think I'll have to start pulling my pants up!"
Maybe he and other rappers will also be inspired to drop bitch and ho from their lyrics too. Now that would be truly revolutionary.
Great piece, Toure!
'Bama please...
It could work. As a white kid that grew up in a black neighborhood, "nigga" always made me feel incredibly out of place. I never felt uncomfortable as a white kid anong blacks, I thought nothing of it (thankfully). Yet that word alone would jar me out my definition of reality and force me to recognize the racial barriers between my friends and I. Words have power, and I for one would be happy to never have to hear that one again.
Mary50, you beat me to it!! That would make my day.
I really don't like this rap crap personally, I think most, not all is very offensive and I just wish it would go out of fashion.....I know I'll probably have along wait for that to happen!!!
As regards to the dress sense of President elect Obama, lets hope that some of his elegance will change the mind set of a lot of young men....black and white to get away from those awful, disgusting baggy pants etc, etc.
How much smarter they would look in a shirt and pants, if not a nice suit....time to get some pride back in how they dress....that kind of rapper dress with all that bling is just a load of nonsense.
It's not the only way to make money in this society, having a brain and looking smart can get you a long way....they should try it.
I really don't like this rap crap personally, I think most, not all is very offensive and I just wish it would go out of fashion.....I know I'll probably have a long wait for that to happen!!!
As regards to the dress sense of President elect Obama, lets hope that some of his elegance will change the mind set of a lot of young men....black and white to get away from those awful, disgusting baggy pants etc, etc.
How much smarter they would look in a shirt and pants, if not a nice suit....time to get some pride back in how they dress....that kind of rapper dress with all that bling is just a load of nonsense.
It's not the only way to make money in this society, having a brain and looking smart can get you a long way....they should try it.
Jim Jones on Broadway-- CBS interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_8G_eKWlcM
im white, but i appreciate rap among many other forms of music,
dude stop tryin to change shit, replacing Obama for slang? Comeon!
Yea I'm happy he's president but do we have to touch every normal activity with his advertisement?
If only black men could see their way clear to dropping all the "bitches" and "hos," too. They could say "michelle" instead. Let's try it out:
"Where my money, michelle?"
"Shut your michelle-ass mouth."
"Don't make me go Bill Withers on you, michelle."
It works great! You should tell Jim Jones next time you're sitting on his lips. I mean on the lip.
Obama: improving the nation one semantic shift at a time.
Great! Now, if only black men would drop the "bitches" and "hos," too. They could replace them with "michelle." Let's see how that works:
"I told you I'd be home at midnight, michelle!"
"Shut your michelle-ass mouth!"
Hey, works great. You should mention it to Jim next time you're sitting on the lip.
I really don't understand why every article that this person writes it makes the American society sound as if we are living in a post racial society. Thats BS! Obama has won, but as a woman of color not one thing has changed in my life. I do not have any additional opportunities. Toure should really stop writing articles where he is distancing himself from his roots of race.
Now that the world is splitting open, what about this? May blacks and whites now borrow more freely from each other's cultures?
Frankly it always hurt my feelings that as a white, I'm not allowed to incorporate black words, style and other cool memes without being tagged as inauthentic and a poser, or at the very least, ironic. And blacks too suffer under this regime, the sting being, "acting white."
Now, I aspire to be like Obama, as I'm sure many whites and blacks do. Could there be some loosening up of the prison gang mentality that says we two races can't use the other's material?
SColbert - nobody is saying that because Obama has been elected that the world is post-racial. Our race isn't defined by one thing that can be put in a neat little box. We are all so much a part of each other's culture, so how is Toure distancing himself? It's an honest reflection.
What Obama has done is make some of us have a look at the sort of person we can be when we don't allow the constraints put on us by other people's perceptions to limit us. Btw - how about creating your own opportunities instead of waiting for them to fall in your lap? Have you done anything differently or created your own opportunities? What if Obama/the guys who created Google/Bill Gates just sat around their cubicles complaining instead of making it happen? If nothing changes, nothing changes.
My family is from Ghana, I was born and raised in England and spent 12 years living in DC. I sound more white than any person I know and couldn't care less what anyone thinks. I use everybody's slang if and when I feel like it. Being yourself...what a futuristic idea.
Great work Toure. I hope that talks like the one you had with Jim Jones will proliferate and make these young men realize how much power words have.
Keep up the good work, Obama
Thank you.
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