When I started reading, I was wondering if there was a connection to “Black Republicans.” Like DaveyWayne, that track made me see the dichotomy. Amazing track–and it shows that Nas and Jay-Z are well-aware of the issues you’re raising here.

Well, glad I found my way here–did so after meeting you and getting your card at the Harlem Book Fair a few weeks ago. In fact, looking fwd to reading your book of essays which I picked up from you that day, but my man Joel borrowed it that day, and I haven’t gotten it back from him.

Anyways, looking fwd to reading more here, and hopefully meeting again to discuss some of these ideas.

So much of my thesis — one of them at least — is built around the idea of historical dialectics. In Hegelian terms (King frequently quoted from Hegel, in fact) the thesis and the anti-thesis bring about the synthesis. In regard to the dichotomy in African-American culture, we’ve never seen the synthesis. King and Malcolm are killed before they come “come together” for example. That splitting, fracturing if you will, haunts us. Part of our interest in and obsession with Malcolm and Martin is the fact that they were so alike and so different and we wonder what would’ve happened if they could’ve hashed out their differences.

In this light I don’t see Nas “working” for Jay in employer-employee terms. I see it symbolic terms. What does it mean when two people who have opposed one another are able to make peace? How does that or can that affect the psychology of the people they represent? This is something new. Something that I want people to see in a different light.

I think the fact that essentially, Nas WORKS for Jay is especially telling.