Nas appeared on PBS’s Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. to discuss his family’s past in an episode that aired on the network today (October 28).
PBS.org shared a clip in which Nas reads the Bill of Sale for his relative Pocahontas.
“They paid $830 for my great, great, great, grandma?” Nas says to host Henry Louis Gates. “I got more than that in my pocket right now.”
Nas’ three-times great grandmother Pocahontas was 15 years old when she was sold to Benjamin Franklin Little.
“We are starting to put faces to names here,” Nas says while looking through a photo book of Little’s plantation. “This is the face my ancestors looked at everyday. Now I’m looking into their world, now I can see where they walked, what they saw. ”
Nas released the album Untitled in 2008 that included a visual nod to the history of slavery as the cover, as it featured him with the type of lashes typically associated with the beatings American slaves endured.
Henry Louis Gates is a professor at Harvard and the host of several PBS documentary series. Gates was arrested in 2009 in an incident of racial profiling at his residence. The incident drew the attention of President Obama.
While discussing Nas’ Hip Hop fellowship at Harvard, Henry Louis Gates gave his opinion on Hip Hop’s significance.
“I would think the takeaways from … Hip Hop would be the values of and the possibilities for entrepreneurship,” Gates said in a video that was published in January. “I don’t think there’s been a period, a cultural movement, or an art form that so specifically nurtures and encourages people that are economically disenfranchised. The extension of the American Dream through economic freedom, ambition, individual will, through the model of Hip Hop, is certainly something that I hope will be stressed in its most positive way.”
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Didn’t know he was going to be on there. I really like that program. I’m recording that tonight. Thanks for the update, HHDX.
“‘They paid $830 for my great, great, great, grandma? Nas says to host Henry Louis Gates. ‘I got more than that in my pocket right now.'”
Yeah, isn’t it interesting how you’re richer, more powerful, and more culturally significant than the slave master you see every time you look at a random white person.
or alternatively, $830 could’ve just been worth a lot more 300 years ago.
$830 was not equivalent to the money, influence, and cultural significance Nas has now.
Welp…like it or not, that was the history. Immigrants always talk about where their family immigrated from. A good portion of African Americans don’t know the specifics of their heritage. I think tracing your roots and learning your family’s history is good thing, despite your cynicism.
“I don’t think there’s been a period, a cultural movement, or an art form that so specifically nurtures and encourages people that are economically disenfranchised.”
Every single artistic or cultural movement has been done by the economically disenfranchised. Every single one, across the entire planet. How is this idiot a professor?
Uh no. Artists used to be supported by the wealthy classes, and there are also periods when the only art was allowed was in veneration of God and supported by the Church.
Artists were not exclusively supported by wealthy classes, if that were the case folk music, hip hop, painting, sculpture, and other forms of artistic expression throughout the world would not exist.
so ballet and classical music were done by broke people?
hannes is right, in pointing out that “Every single artistic or cultural movement has been done by the economically disenfranchised. Every single one, across the entire planet” IS INCORRECT
“so ballet and classical music were done by broke people?”
Ballet performers could be broke, yes. Classical composers could be and often were broke, yes. Folk music. Visual art. Sculpture. It was all done by disenfranchised and poor people. All of it. Hip hop is not unique. Throughout the world it is STILL done by broke people. It’s not that fucking difficult to understand.
there is a recorded time in history where the arts were sanctioned and commissioned by royalty, religion, and wealthy, that’s why there’s only a few artists reveled from a 1000 year period and only from certain countries
don’t be an asshole
Kelis called and claimed that $900.00 that was in Nas’s pocket.
stop being so effeminate
^ That comment made me laugh for some reason lol
i hate white slavemasters.