Lord Jamar Says White People "Don't Create Anything"

by Soren Baker - posted January 17, 2014

Exclusive: Lord Jamar also says we are heading in a direction where it will "seem odd for a black man to do Hip Hop."

In September, Lord Jamar said that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ "Same Love” pushed an agenda that he did not approve of. In a new, exclusive interview with HipHopDX, the Brand Nubian rapper says that he doesn’t think that a White rapper should push an agenda that goes against the principles upon which Hip Hop culture was founded.

“As a White person, who is a guest to the house of Hip Hop, you don't have the right, okay, to come in and try to decide where this shit should go,” Lord Jamar says during an exclusive interview with HipHopDX. "Make a Rock song saying that. Make some EDM shit promoting that. Like don't try to use our vehicle, our vehicle that we created, to promote some shit that you know we don't fuck with. That's all I'm saying. 

"I'm not saying White people can't make Hip Hop,” Lord Jamar continues. "I'm not saying you can't talk about pretty much what you want to talk about, but then again, there are boundaries to everything. If I'm making wine, I can't just put fucking beer in there and call it wine. It's no longer wine. It's something else. Don't try to tell me that, ‘Oh, Hip Hop is self expression.' Yeah Hip Hop is self-expression. It is all those things. You're right. But, everything has its parameters, and to say that Black people don't own this music is ridiculous. All cultures want to highlight their accomplishments and there's nothing wrong with that." 

Lord Jamar says that he takes issue with the fact that things created by Black people are appropriated by White people, a practice that has taken place, in music in particular, since Black people arrived in the United States.

“They [White people] don't create anything,” Lord Jamar says. "Look at all the remakes they did. Look at all the remakes they did with movies. They're not creative. We've come up with how many different genres of music as long as we've been here, in America? And they've stolen damn-near every one, to the point [where] now it seems odd for a Black man to do Rock & Roll or Country music, when the banjo is an African instrument. They just added a few more strings. Like, knock it off. And that's where Country music comes from, and then Blues and all that type of shit. Rock & Roll was a slang for fuckin' that we came up with. Okay? And so now it seems odd, and so how many years in the future will it seem odd for a black man to do Hip Hop, the way it's going? You see what I'm saying? But what will we do? What we always do. We'll come up with some other fucking shit that'll intrigue you. Some whole next kind of music that'll have you like, 'Oh my God. How did you do that?' And you'll try to shit on it at first the way you did with Hip Hop and then when you see that it's relentless, then you'll try to co-opt it."