Young Jeezy Raps About Obama
I consume some of my hip-hip like an anorexic binge eats. I intake all the beats and rhymes I can load up on my laptop and before they can properly digest I figuratively drag myself over to my computer's recycle bin to throw up all of the violence, misogyny and dope slanging that just doesn't fit the image of the phat dude in the mirror.
Non hip-hop lovers wonder how I can listen to some of the most foul and be unaffected.
I shrug. I've been compartmentalizing for, what, 39 years now?
There's one aspect of binging on gangsta rap that justifies the high. It's the inadvertent discovery of a poignant message.
I've come to expect hustling lessons from Young Jeezy and
took a listen to The Recession
because I dug the Kanye collab "Put On" and thought the album title was
especially timely and cool. I was just looking for a couple more club bangers,
but when I scanned the back of the CD and saw the track called "My President"
featuring Nas I smirked.
Naw.
(See Jeezy discuss Obama in exclusive clip below.)
The Recession didn't have a "You Must Love Me" (Jay-Z, In My Lifetime, Vol. 1), "Somethin' 2 Live 4" (WC, Ghetto Heisman) or "Freedom Of Preach" (Ludacris, Release Therapy) moment?
You know the moment. It comes at the end of an otherwise perfectly good sensationalistic hip-hop record. It's that final song that snaps you out of the trance with a Spike Lee "Wake Up" urgency.
Considering my fascination with these anchor records, I wanted to fast forward to the end of the album to see what the Atlanta rapper had to say. But I waited patiently, listening to all of the preceding songs.
I had a sense that Jeezy wasn't going to go the route that
Ludacris did on "Politics As Usual" and attack Obama's opponents. And he
didn't.
While there are still numerous references to rims, the great white and prison, the most salient part of the song is the opening line of the repeated chorus, "My president is Black."
It was hard not to feel the hype when listening to this song in September, then still two months before Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States and the first of African American heritage.
It was fitting that Jeezy released the video for this song during the week of Obama's inauguration. Also see him discuss Obama in the above special Yahoo! video intro.
This is just one reason why I've never been too concerned about my listening disorder. Plus, I can stop binge listening whenever I want.


in fact he's half white
so even in a racist mind he's half right
if you have racist mind you'll be aight
my president is black but his house is all white
Please keep them comin' consistently!