Despite the absence of Eminem’s name on the tracklist, Slim Shady has made a healthy contribution to Royce Da 5’9’s new album The Allegory.
Midway through the project, a familiar voice begins speaking on “Perspective (Skit)” and it’s quickly apparent it’s Nickle Nine’s Bad Meets Evil cohort.
For two minutes and 24 seconds, Em speaks on Hip Hop’s ability to unite all races while simultaneously dissecting the ugliness of racism.
Read the full transcript below.
“You’ve got people of all races, like coming together and helping shape this from the ground up. Now you got little white kids growin’ up with black idols. And you got black kids growin’ up with white idols. And you got … it’s just this whole mixing pot. Nothing has brought more races and more people from all different walks of life together than Hip Hop. No music has done that. I don’t think anything has done that as much as Hip Hop has.
In the same token, I can understand the frustration being that damn near every form of music, period, was created by black people. So, you got Chuck Berry, you got Rosetta Tharpe. And rock n’ roll is starting to get some attention but then along comes Elvis. And people are acting like, “Oh my God I’ve never seen this before.” You’ve seen it before, but you might not have seen a white person do it to this level. So now, he sells the most records and people are callin’ him the king of rock n’ roll right?
On the other side of the coin, if I’m a black kid growing up in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, whatever, and I’m looking on TV, and nobody looks like me and it’s very stereotypical and I’m looking at toys and the fuckin’ action figures are all white. The fuckin’ superheroes are all white. Maybe there’s one or two black superheroes mixed in there with mostly white. I don’t know how I grow up and not have a chip on my shoulder.
On the other flip side of that coin, we don’t get to choose our parents. We don’t get to choose what color we’re born. It’s more about — at that point, it becomes “You’re born here, you are what color you are, what nationality you are.”And it’s what you do with it, right? To make a difference.”