Ima Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo4Sqt2Bmag
Mad Decent's Zebra Katz melds vogue into rap accompanied by Njena Reddd Foxxx in a one-off 2012 track recorded by the best friends and then immortalized with a desaturated video directed by Ruben XYZ.
Ima read that bitch
Ima school that bitch
Ima take that bitch to college
Ima give that bitch some knowledge
In the underground street language of vogueing, to "read" someone is to comprehensively insult them with words so deeply cutting they cannot be denied.
Set in an empty high school with two black female students wearing uniforms and white 能-inspired yet-expressionless face masks, Zebra Katz plays the teacher, meta-rapping about the insults he's going to apply like red-letter F's drawn on exam papers, as The Fire This Time rests on his desk:
The pain of black life (and death) often inspires flowery verse, but every poem and essay in Jesmyn Ward’s volume remains grounded in a harsh reality that our nation, at large, refuses fully to confront.
Njena Reddd Foxxx plays another student, who nevertheless joins in the referential verbal abuse,
It's gonna be cohesive
It's gonna be my thesis
Who are they "reading"? We don't know. Both their strikes and their target remain off-screen.
First period, don't give a fuck
Second period, gonna get cut
Lunchtime, feed that bitch
Like a slaughterhouse, I'll bleed that bitch
Class president, Ima lead that bitch
Take 'em outside I don't need that bitch
School's out, bells starts ringin'
Better watch out 'cause them bullets start swingin'
School's out, bells starts ringin'
Better watch out 'cause I'm gonna start swingin'
This is not from a generation who believes sticks and stones are more dangerous than words.
Ima chop that bitch
Ima slice that bitch
Ima dice that bitch
Ima ice that bitch
The outer world perceives misogyny upon hearing this assault, but this song has queer roots, this "bitch" could be of any birth-sex, and bitch certainly fights back off-screen, this duet is only one side of the night, one side of a never-ending respectful rivalry between artists who revere insults,
imagine who steps up to the mic next,
Proofread that bitch
when you grow up black, queer, and other, you need thick skin, you need to fight back, so you first learn to welcome and wield words within your own community, on a friendly segregated stage,
you're gonna read that bitch,
but you never forget the real enemy,
-----
The Tradition by JERICHO BROWN
Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought
Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning
Names in heat, in elements classical
Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.
Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will
Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter
On this planet than when our dead fathers
Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.
Men like me and my brothers filmed what we
Planted for proof we existed before
Too late, sped the video to see blossoms
Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems
Where the world ends, everything cut down.
John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.
-----
In interviews, Zebra Katz claims this song is about promoting literacy, but he's fucking with you. This song is about resistance and liberation. Literacy and "reading" are both tools serving a greater goal: strengthening your black, queer, and other self against the white patriarchy.
This past, the Negro’s past, of rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolk, his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible-this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful . . . people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. . . . -- James Baldwin
Mad Decent's Zebra Katz melds vogue into rap accompanied by Njena Reddd Foxxx in a one-off 2012 track recorded by the best friends and then immortalized with a desaturated video directed by Ruben XYZ.
Ima read that bitch
Ima school that bitch
Ima take that bitch to college
Ima give that bitch some knowledge
In the underground street language of vogueing, to "read" someone is to comprehensively insult them with words so deeply cutting they cannot be denied.
Set in an empty high school with two black female students wearing uniforms and white 能-inspired yet-expressionless face masks, Zebra Katz plays the teacher, meta-rapping about the insults he's going to apply like red-letter F's drawn on exam papers, as The Fire This Time rests on his desk:
The pain of black life (and death) often inspires flowery verse, but every poem and essay in Jesmyn Ward’s volume remains grounded in a harsh reality that our nation, at large, refuses fully to confront.
Njena Reddd Foxxx plays another student, who nevertheless joins in the referential verbal abuse,
It's gonna be cohesive
It's gonna be my thesis
Who are they "reading"? We don't know. Both their strikes and their target remain off-screen.
First period, don't give a fuck
Second period, gonna get cut
Lunchtime, feed that bitch
Like a slaughterhouse, I'll bleed that bitch
Class president, Ima lead that bitch
Take 'em outside I don't need that bitch
School's out, bells starts ringin'
Better watch out 'cause them bullets start swingin'
School's out, bells starts ringin'
Better watch out 'cause I'm gonna start swingin'
This is not from a generation who believes sticks and stones are more dangerous than words.
Ima chop that bitch
Ima slice that bitch
Ima dice that bitch
Ima ice that bitch
The outer world perceives misogyny upon hearing this assault, but this song has queer roots, this "bitch" could be of any birth-sex, and bitch certainly fights back off-screen, this duet is only one side of the night, one side of a never-ending respectful rivalry between artists who revere insults,
imagine who steps up to the mic next,
Proofread that bitch
when you grow up black, queer, and other, you need thick skin, you need to fight back, so you first learn to welcome and wield words within your own community, on a friendly segregated stage,
you're gonna read that bitch,
but you never forget the real enemy,
-----
The Tradition by JERICHO BROWN
Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought
Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning
Names in heat, in elements classical
Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.
Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will
Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter
On this planet than when our dead fathers
Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.
Men like me and my brothers filmed what we
Planted for proof we existed before
Too late, sped the video to see blossoms
Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems
Where the world ends, everything cut down.
John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.
-----
In interviews, Zebra Katz claims this song is about promoting literacy, but he's fucking with you. This song is about resistance and liberation. Literacy and "reading" are both tools serving a greater goal: strengthening your black, queer, and other self against the white patriarchy.
This past, the Negro’s past, of rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolk, his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible-this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful . . . people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. . . . -- James Baldwin