DEAN ATTA .
I AM NOBODY’S NIGGER
Dean Atta’s controversial poem, ‘I Am Nobody’s Nigger’, gets a visual from SBTV’s production arm, Sudden|Black. Featuring prominent figures within the uk music scene, Scorcher, Clement Marfo, Random Impulse, Mic Righteous, Roxxane and Jamal Edwards.
I Am Nobody’s Nigger
Rappers when you use the word “nigger” remember that’s one of the last words Stephen Lawrence heard, so don’t tell me it’s a reclaimed word.
I am nobody’s nigger
So please, let my ancestors rest in peace
Not turn in their graves in Jamaica plantations
Or the watery graves of the slave trade
Thrown overboard into middle passage
Just for insurance claims
They were chained up on a boat
As many as they could manage and stay afloat
Stripped of dignity and all hope
Awaiting their masters and European names
But the sick and the injured were dead weight to toss
And Lloyds of London would cover that cost.I am nobody’s nigger
So you can tell Weezy and Drake
That they made a mistake
I am nobody’s nigger now
So you can tell Kanye and Jigga
I am not a nigger… in Paris
I’m not a nigger in London
I’m not a nigger in New York
I’m not a nigger in Kingston
I’m not a nigger in Accra
Or a nigger with attitude in Compton
Cos “I don’t wanna be called yo nigga”How were you raised on Public Enemy
And still became your own worst enemy?
You killed Hip Hop and resurrected headless zombies
That can’t think for themselves or see where they’re going
Or quench the blood lust because there’s no blood flowing
In their hearts, just in the streets
They don’t give a damn as long as they eating
Their hearts ain’t beating, they’re cold as ice (bling)
Because they would put money over everything
Money over self respect or self esteem
Or empowering the youth to follow their dreams
Stacking paper cos it’s greater than love it seems
Call me “nigger” cos you’re scared of what “brother” meansTo know that we share something unspeakable
To know that as high as we rise we are not seen as equal
To know that racism is institutional thinking
And that “nigger” is the last word you heard before a lynching.
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'I Am Nobody's Nigger'
- Poet Dean Atta
Responds To
Stephen Lawrence
And Racism In Britain
(VIDEO)
First Posted: 11/01/2012 15:25 Updated: 15/02/2012
26-year-old Dean Atta is one of the leading lights in London's poetry scene. His powerful reflections on race, identity and sexuality have won him recognition from BBC Radio, Channel 4 and the Tate Britain - not to mention a formidable reputation on the spoken word circuit.
But it's with his latest piece that Atta is beginning to attract a audience beyond the capital's poetry slams.
I Am Nobody's Nigger, performed here in an exclusive video interview with Huffington Post Culture, is primarily a response to the Stephen Lawrence murder case. But it also comes at a time when the issue of racism is bubbling up in several areas of British life, from politics to music to football.
In it he castigates those who use the term 'nigger' as though its a piece of toothless slang rather than a word with a potent and powerful role in the history of oppression. The poem - with its devastating final verse - is clocking up soundcloud and YouTube views at a rapid pace, and has been lauded by commentators from poetry, hip hop and even politics when it was praised by MP David Lammy on Twitter. Best of all, Dean says, it has prompted some rappers to get in touch with him to say they've given up using the word for good.
Watch the video above to hear Dean explain why he wrote the poem in his own words before performing it in full. You can read more about him and his work at his official website andfollow him on Twitter. Warning: the poem contains strong language.
You can also hear some remixes of I Am Nobody's Nigger set to music on soundcloud.
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Dean Atta:
meet the iPhone poet
Dean Atta's angry, rapidly written poem about Stephen Lawrence went viral last week. He talks to Stephen Isaac-Wilson
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 January 2012
Until last week, Dean Atta was relatively unknown; unless you were deeply immersed in the world of spoken word you probably wouldn't have heard of him. Then, in the wake of the conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, he wrote his poem I Am Nobody's Nigger, and took the internet by storm. In five days, his poem had received in excess of 15,000 hits and gained him an extra 1,000 followers on Twitter. The poem was, he says, a reaction to "the injustice of the death of Stephen Lawrence", and to the loose usage of the N-word. "Watching Panorama, where they reconstructed his murder, and hearing that the N-word was the last thing they said when they stabbed him really struck a chord with me."
The poem began as an update on Facebook and post on Twitter, saying: "Rappers, when you use the word 'nigger' remember that's one of the last words Stephen Lawrence heard, so don't tell me it's a reclaimed word." It received 80 likes and 50 retweets, and became the first line of a poem he wrote in 30 minutes.
We meet at a poetry event on Brick Lane in east London. The evening is the brainchild of Clarissa Pabi, a former president of the Oxford University Poetry Society, and features poetry, music, film installation and open mics – a chance for aspiring poets and musicians to perform. Atta arrives, smiling in a grey hat and pink jumper, and is recognised by many guests.
The 27-year-old Londoner has been writing and performing for more than 10 years. Initially, he says, poetry was an opportunity to vent. "I started writing about stuff I was seeing in the news, my own sexual identity and being mixed race." (His mother is Greek, his father Jamaican.) At Sussex University, where he studied English and philosophy, he was president of the African Caribbean Society and was the black students' rep on the student union council; he believes these roles helped instil a political and social conscience. Since then, he has been commissioned to write poems for galleries including Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery and Keats House, as well as organisations such as the Damilola Taylor Trust.
In his Lawrence poem Atta writes, "How were you raised on Public Enemy/ and still became your own worst enemy." This isn't the first time he has criticised the exclusivity of hip-hop: last summer he made a BBC 1Xtra documentary with SBTV presenter Georgia Lewis Anderson called No Homo: Hip Hop's Last Taboo. The programme highlighted what Atta feels is the rejection of gay people by rap culture, something that led him towards spoken-word performance instead; he describes his poemYoung, Black and Gay as a signature piece.
Dealing with his sexuality has been the premise of much of Atta's work; growing up, this was more of an issue for him than race. "You know you're black, but you have to kind of figure out that you're gay," he explains. He might have written a poem about Lawrence, but doesn't feel qualified to comment on the sentences received by Dobson and Norris. Nor was he aware of Carol Ann Duffy's response last week, her poem Stephen Lawrence. All he will say is that the media representation of black people is "very marginal", with "negative stories receiving a lot of airtime".
Atta admits he doesn't normally publish so quickly, though he is happy he did. "I recorded it on to my iPhone, and it was straight online. I tweeted it and it just went viral." Tonight, to an audience of around 40, he takes to the mic and performs it again, appearing much more apprehensive than he was in conversation. There are claps and cheers, and one standing ovation.
Atta's plans include more writing; he has written a play, Queen Pokou, based on the mythological west African princess, currently being performed on the London fringe. And there will be more poetry. "The power of poetry is limitless. Whether it's Obama's or David Cameron's speeches, or Maya Angelou talking, it's all spoken word," he tells me. "It's not just a niche scene happening in Hoxton. It's prevalent in our everyday life."
>via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/11/dean-atta-stephen-lawrence-poem
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Dean Atta
- "Fatherless Nation"
>via: http://vimeo.com/channels/brixtonsessions/page:2