After much consternation, rapper Nas confirms his December album will be titled 'Nigger'.
There was trepidation when rap hero Nas claimed that the follow-up to the controversially-titled 'Hip Hop Is Dead' album would be the even-more-controversially-titled 'Nigga'. Reverend Jesse Jackson and representatives from the NAACP both baulked at the title and reports attributed to his label Def Jam said that not only would the album not be called 'Nigga', but that they had no album scheduled for release at all.Now Nas has spoken to MTV News, saying that the Def Jam news was erroneous and that he will be releasing the album, with more pointed spelling in the title, on December 11. He responded that Jackson and the NAACP had been goaded by Fox News to comment, saying "What they do is try to hurry up and get you on the phone and try to get you to talk about something you might not know about yet."
"If Cornell West was making an album called 'Nigger', they would know he's got something intellectual to say," the rapper continued. "To think I'm gonna say something that's not intellectual is calling me a nigger, and to be called a nigger by Jesse Jackson and the NAACP is counterproductive, counter-revolutionary."
He points out ""I wanna make the word easy on muthafuckas' ears. You see how white boys ain't mad at 'cracker' 'cause it don't have the same [sting] as 'nigger'? I want 'nigger' to have less meaning [than] 'cracker.'"
