page_title: Use of nigger in the arts
section_title: Music
hierarchical_section_title: Use of nigger in the arts / Music
caption_attribution_description: English: "Run, nigger, run! or the M. P. 'll catch you", a version of "Run, Nigger, Run" recorded in White's Serenaders' Song Book (1851)
context_section_description: The folk song "Oh! Susanna" by Stephen Foster had originally been written in four verses. The second verse describes an industrial accident which "kill'd five hundred Nigger" by electrocution.
  The 1932 British song "The Sun Has Got His Hat On" originally included the line "He's been tanning niggers out in Timbuktu" (where "He" is the sun). Modern recordings substitute other lines.
  The Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák wrote the String Quartet No. 12 in 1893 during his time in the United States. For its presumed association with African-American music, the quartet was referred to until the 1950s with nicknames such as "Negro Quartet" and "Nigger Quartet" before being called the "American Quartet".
  In the 1960s, record producer J. D. "Jay" Miller published pro-racial segregation music, with the "Reb Rebel" label featuring racist songs by Johnny Rebel and others, demeaning black Americans and the Civil Rights Movement. The country music artist David Allan Coe used the racial terms "redneck", "white trash", and "nigger" in the songs "If That Ain't Country, I'll Kiss Your Ass" and "Nigger Fucker".
  In 1972 John Lennon and Yoko Ono used the word in both the title and in the chorus of their song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World," which was released as both a single and a track on their album "Sometime in New York City." 
  On Bob Marley and the Wailers' 1973 song "Get Up, Stand Up", Marley can be heard singing the line, "Don't be a nigger in your neighborhood" during the outro.
  In 1975 Bob Dylan used the word in his song "Hurricane".
  In 1978 Patti Smith used the word prominently in her song "Rock N Roll Nigger".
  The punk band the Dead Kennedys used the word in their 1980 song "Holiday in Cambodia" in the line, "Bragging that you know how the niggers feel cold and the slum's got so much soul". The context is a section mocking champagne socialists. Rap groups such as N.W.A (Niggaz with Attitudes) re-popularized the usage in their songs. One of the earliest uses of the word in hip hop was in the song "New York New York" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in 1983. Responding to accusations of racism after referring to "niggers" in the lyrics of the 1988 Guns N' Roses song, "One in a Million", Axl Rose stated: "I was pissed off about some black people that were trying to rob me. I wanted to insult those particular black people. I didn't want to support racism."
  The term white nigger is also used in music, most notably in Elvis Costello's song "Oliver's Army", see below.
  Since the 2010s the word nigger has been used with increasing frequency by African Americans amongst themselves or in self-expression, the most common swear word in hip hop music lyrics. As a result, it is a word that is heard daily by millions of all races worldwide who listen to uncensored hip hop and other music genres, while being socially unacceptable for anyone but African Americans to utter. Ta-Nehisi Coates has suggested that it continues to be unacceptable for people who are not of African ancestry to utter the word nigger while singing or rapping along to hip-hop, and that by being so restrained it gives White Americans (specifically) a taste of what it's like to not be entitled to "do anything they please, anywhere". Counterpoint to this standpoint is the open question of whether daily, frequent exposure by non-Black Americans to African Americans using the word will inevitably lead to a dilution of the extremely negative perception of the word among the majority of non-Black Americans that currently consider its use unacceptable and shocking.
caption: 1851 song lyrics
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