royalangelgirl said:

I was on you tube looking up prince songs. There was a lady who covered when doves cry. Her name was patti smith. Then later she song something called rock n roll nigger and called jimi Hendrix a nigger.

You need to education yourself. Do some research about the song and it's meaning. Patti wasn't a lady either, she is a musical icon to many.

royalangelgirl said:

Then I thought about all the black musicians that where rock stars.

A LADY!!!!!

It's not easy to explain that song to someone today. But I'll give it a shot.

Patti Smith comes from a tradition of "outsider" poets and artists that were thought to be outside of society, because the subject of their writing is so dark and dangerous. Thy're writing about drugs and sex and nasty stuff that polite people don't talk about. Basically, in the song she is comparing herself to people who are shut out of society, and she says "outside of society, that's where I wanna be!" She's basically calling herself an n-word, proudly. She's not saying she hates black people, if anything she's saying she wants to be black, or even thinks she IS because her art is so dangerous to society.

Now, that's a pretty white-privileged attitude to take. Patti Smith never wrote anything that would make it so she couldn't get a cab in NYC. Punk rockers had some messed-up ideas.

But it's a little more complicated than just saying, she called Hendrix the n-word. She called herself, and Jesus, and her mother that too.

royalangelgirl said:

Oh the word is definitely still degrading!

bobzilla77 said:

Oh ffs