Like it was Nigger the government had been bailing out.
It was Nigger's voice, of course, talking out loud while I was trying to listen.
It was Nigger who wondered – aloud, for my benefit – what they called a black American gentleman with a doctorate just after he'd left the room.
Some said the Devil did the tuning, but it was Nigger who'd wring the blues out of that old six-string, even with two strings broke.
When I found myself in the Ivory League, it was Nigger who helped me navigate the strait between "negro" and "black", who pointed out the implications of the euphemisms – "underclass", "overachiever", "tangle of pathology".
One black soldier, drained by the tense racial atmosphere in the enlisted men's clubs, commented: "Chuck's [euphemism for a white man] all right until he gets a beer under his belt and then it's nigger this and nigger that, and besides, to be honest, Chuck ain't too much fun, you dig?" Indeed, by the late 1960s in Vietnam, black and white soldiers were socialising in separate bars and clubs.
Exploring racism and the strife of the working class with both gravity and humor, he composed the song after his supervisor would not let him listen to jazz and soul music, claiming it was "nigger shit".
The unofficial, widely known title of "Untitled" is "Nigger," and it's a clue: Nas found inspiration in his anger.
The word is "nigger," and it appears 219 times in Huckleberry Finn alone.
