Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.
This week’s song is “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” as performed by Ice-T’s Body Count and Jane’s Addiction:
It’s another cover version from the 1990s, following last week’s New Bomb Turks entry. Sly and the Family Stone get a completely menacing makeover during this live performance from Lollapalooza in 1991, a few months after the Rodney King beating (though before the riots that followed the acquittal of the police officers in 1992).
This performance is packed with menace: Ice-T and Perry Farrell stand nose to nose like boxers, eyes covered in dark glasses, and each takes his turn at the microphone to intimidate the other man, particularly when it comes to pronouncing the words “whitey” and “nigger”. The slowed-down bassline, hi-hat and ride cymbal, as well as the creaking and wailing guitars further create an atmosphere of tension, mainly through the use of rests; visually and musically this is a drama in which something is going to break.
And when it does break, it’s incendiary: loud, heavy rock, and a white man yelling the word “nigger” over and over, and clearly enjoying it.* But that’s not all: hot on the heels of that, both vocalists shift to face not one another (Ice-T no longer facing a barrage of racist abuse) but the audience, and here things get even more interesting: Perry Farrell’s call, “I’m proud to be a–” receives Ice-T’s response: “Say it loud!” and Ice-T’s black power salute is mirrored by Perry Farrell’s Nazi salute. That space–proud to be a what?–is left blank: each audience member can fill it in with whatever he or she wants. Again, imagery and music (and lyrics) create a confrontational, and complicated, moment: you have to watch the positive (though not everyone would agree) black power salute on an even plane with a Nazi salute, and Perry Farrell (who’s Jewish, which adds another dimension) doesn’t give you any clue as to how to read it; it’s not the obvious lampoon of Dr. Strangelove–he looks serious. They’re throwing out a challenge just as much as they’re proclaiming and demanding self-pride. The second and final time through this chorus, Perry Farrell pulls out a switchblade; the violence is implied, and is performance, but the tension the band has created over four minutes is real, exhilarating, and never quite dispelled, which it seems to me makes this performance all the more impressive: the performers create a political statement without a straightforward message, without telling you what to think, but rather: by drawing you into a moment in which musical performance demands that you experience. They create a paradox: they perform music and words (let’s give Sly the credit he’s due, too) projecting the need and demand for racial inclusion, while also putting on a small and intense dramatization of its opposite.
I genuinely rate this as one of the great performances in popular music history. It happened at a major festival, at a time when America’s always simmering racial tensions were rising a few degrees in temperature, and when I first encountered it in 1993 in Perry Farrell’s and Casey Niccoli’s film Gift, it permanently impressed itself on my mind.
*Look closely and you’ll see Ice-T starts enjoying it, too–because this song rocks–until he remembers he’s supposed to be performing; it’s a brief slip that shows just how complicated a thing these guys are pulling off.
