Interview w/ Dead Prez

Q: Working with Nas on the Nigger album and hearing and seeing all the attention and feedback he’s getting, what’s your opinion on the term, concept and in general everything?
It’s a delicate issue and it’s a trivial issue at the same time. As much as it matters it’s semantics, and if I’m totally honest that’s what I really think. White people came up with the term nigger, but historically the Niger river Negus which means King and all these are derivatives of these six letters and it’s just a word until a system of White power uses that word to identify and stigmatize and criminalize people. That’s when the word nigger matters. The word Nigger on a piece of paper doesn’t mean shit to me. To me Tupac took that word and baptized it so to speak. He said we’re gonna spell it like this and it stands for never ignorant, getting goals accomplished, and when he said that for me he baptized it for me. Every time I say it that’s what I mean. As far as Nas, why doesn’t he have the right as an artist to call his albums anything he wants? All these Uncle Tom niggas jumped on him without giving that Black man a chance to express himself. For all they know he could have said I hate this word and I never want to see it again and I have twenty songs to tell you why. They’re not doing it for Nas’ benefit or our benefit, they’re doing it for White folks. I just got back from LA working with Nas on his album and we did about five or six songs and you know how we do, so it’s definitely going to be something that’s going to inspire the people and be all the way hood and all the way real.