First off I don’t know how it took a few days before I stumbled upon this story but for all of you who rely on the CFC for all your news and culture I’ll continue.
Enter “Accidental Racist.” Apparently some country singer Brad Paisley and LL Cool J decided to make a song trying to heal relations between the south/north (LL: “The relationship between the Mason-Dixon needs some fixin’”) and black/white. To be honest I very rarely bother to even think about the war of northern aggression (as it is often referred to in the south) but hey, kudos to two artists who want to make things better. But they don’t.
I won’t judge the bad artistic choices/professional suicide that fans of both artists probably feel respectively but I gotta say this just seems like good intentions gone horribly awry. How could anyone have ever fathomed that LL Cool J would be giving a R.I.P. shout out to Robert E. Lee? And wait for it, did he really just forgive and forget slavery?!-
“If you don’t judge my do-rag
I won’t judge your red flag
If you don’t judge my gold chains
I’ll forget the iron chains.”
(Contrast this with Common’s verse on Jadakiss’s “Why?” remix, “Why a whip and a chain the black American dream?” Note: whip=car, chain=gold chain.)
Anyway, you should really read Rembert Browne‘s insightful piece about it on Grantland.com, here. It’s not only hilarious but gives a pretty full run down of the whole song and offers some dubious quotes he got from LL at this years SXSW. Do we have a black Charlie Sheen in the making?
*Also of note, It also seems all the videos of the song have been pulled from Youtube.
