A Tribe Called Quest's Sucka Nigga from 1993 is one of the few hip-hop tracks to address the emotive power of the N-word.
A couple of weeks on from New York City council's decision to ban the use of the N-word, how has the hip-hop world responded? Have they been rushing back to the studio to re-record their songs and make them less profane? Or have they argued the case that, as rappers generally spell it "nigga", the law doesn't apply to them?
Actually, hip-hop has shrugged. The reappropriation of the word by the hip-hop community dwarfs that of the word "queer" by homosexual groups. It's bled from use in lyrics to use in everyday life. It's even become a term of endearment. Its use is so accepted that it's barely questioned - A Tribe Called Quest's Sucka Nigga from 1993 being one of the few tracks to even address the emotive power of the word.
Recently, however, there have been some stirrings of discontent. Comedian Chris Rock turned heads with a standup routine where he differentiated between black people and "niggas", and rapper NYOil has recorded a song explicitly stating that the use of the word by black people was holding them back as it reinforced a negative stereotype.
But hip-hop isn't very good at self-policing - look at the ever-lengthening police records of household names like Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes - and the chances of them taking notice of a non-enforceable law when they often take a relaxed approach to enforceable ones is remote.
More importantly, however, the use of the N-word in African-American communities is a mere footnote compared to other race issues: the shooting of unarmed civilians by police, the possibility of a black president, Al Sharpton's recently unearthed familial link to segregationist Strom Thurmond. Hip-hop has used the word to such an extent that it's become part of the wallpaper - it only jumps out when an outsider uses it. Seinfeld star Michael Richards proved that then the word will always be charged and jarring, no matter how familiar hip-hop has made it.
