On Thursday evening, NY Fab! was invited to attend a private screening of the Nas video, "Be a N***a too", where I got a chance to speak to my man Nasir (lol). Check out my mini recap below:
1. Venue: The event was held at the Tribecca Grand Hotel (2 Ave. of Americas) in the heart of downtown Manhattan. It's very old school New York, beautifully designed with dim lights and with a very cute bell man (lol).2. The door: Although the screening was scheduled to begin at promptly at 7:00 p.m., the doors didn't open until well after 7:30. However, their list was extremely organized!
3. The crowd: An exclusive event, the best in the industry were invited, including the good folks from Vibe, BET, MTV, etc. Also spotted were Q-Tip, Angie Martinez, Fabulous, DJ Green Latern, Fabulous, and Shaheem Reid. During the screening there was one ignorant dude who kept shouting and saying ridiculous things! The host told him, "Someone messed up their plus one."
4. Inside: Once inside, waiters served each guest glasses of champagne and handed out "N" Word promotional cards. The room was filled with pictures of slaves being lynched and whipped. It was amazing and a bit sad all at the same time. All that history in your face at once is not only powerful but disheartening.
The low down: "Nas doesn't offend anybody, because Nas offends everybody," Rik Cordero, director of the "Be a N**** too" video. Rik expressed how much old school Spike Lee movies had an effect on this video.
5. Video: I have a love/hate relationship with Nas because of his lyrics and this truly amazing video. The video was deep; it made you think, it made you cry and it also showed just how far African Americans have come in this country. The video opens with audio clips of Malcom X and Paul Mooney against a beautiful Manhattan background.
Cameo's included Lance Reddick, Chris Parlow, Danny Hoch, Michael Rappaport, La Bruha, and John Cho. There were many political messages in the video that outlined conflicts between blacks and whites as well as a black man being lynched.
What Nas Thought: Nas finally admitted that the name of his album had changed, "My fans know what the name of the album is and I think the picture on the cover speaks for itself," he said. When asked about Al Sharpton having an influence on changing his album name, he said, "They saying they wanna take credit for changing the name of my album but they didn't change ish."
He went on further to talk about old school black leaders, "See you gotta understand these older Blacks make a lot of money outta stopping these record companies from using the N-word. So they can't let me jeopardize how they make their money by allowing an album called, "N***a" to come out."
Nas explains his thoughts on the N-word, ”We made a culture outta something they never expected us to come out of...We made a beautiful culture from it. We had people like Richard Pryor, N.W.A., and Dr. Dre help make this. ”
Nas also spoke about his relationship to politics and how it affects his music and himself: "I’m not into politics. It would be cool if Barack won but I don’t support the political system. I’m in a world of my own. That’s why when they had the "Vote or Die" ish I wasn’t apart of it."
"Ain’t no President ever affect me personally,” he responded when asked about U.S. Presidents who have affected Black community. “But now that we all seeing in front of us what’s going on; we all seeing it now. So if nigger means ignorant, then we all niggers because we seeing now in America how we all getting played.”
I'll be sure to post the video when it's released to the public!
Shout out to Roberto at Cornerstone...oh yea, stay fab and informed! :)
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