Karaoke Forums

What I can't stand is the triple-standard:
(1) It's okay to use the word if you're black: freely use it in music and as a label for each other.
(2) It's never okay to use the word if you're white - ever.
(3) It is the dreaded "N-word" that is supposed to be offensive to everyone?

If it's as offensive as everyone makes it out to be, then EVERYONE would, and should, stop using it and let it die a silent death. But that doesn't happen does it? The black artists keep repeating it - claiming it to be artistic license - but they'll be all up in arms if I started tossing it around as freely and they do and I'd be the one labeled some kind of bigot or racist.

When I was a kid, we were taught...

"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt me"

Now, can someone tell me why black parents are NOT expected to teach this to their children?

It would appear that most (not all) black people are just extremely thin skinned and more so than any other race, and we are all just expected to accept this. Their inability to handle mere words is also a big part of their image problem. American Indians were treated infinitely worse than the black race, and you don't see American Indians flipping out over the "R word".

God bless President Obama for setting a great example for black people. He got where he is by working hard and not losing his cool over words thrown at him. He basically said to all black people, "This is how you do it". Apparently, lots of them still think that is just too hard.

Hmm. One of my favorite songs to perform at karaoke--at appropriate venues--is Creep in the style of Radiohead. It's a crowd-pleaser when sung well.

I have done both the original and the radio edit. It's more fun to do the original, and artistically it's more in the character of the song. Musically, I can't say it matters all that much to sing "You're so very special" instead of "You're so #*%&ing special."

I tell them to sing it exactly as it shows on screen or your mic will be shut off. I have two versions that are both clean.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

I do ALWAYS ask the KJ if it will be a problem.

Luckily this is one SC actually did the clean version of. Normally they would do the explicit version and just **** the word out. I wish more manus would do alternative versions to choose either clean or explicit. Even the Greased Lightning from Grease, there is both a clean and not clean version.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Wait, what? Say it ain't so..

I didn't even know Greased Lightning had any explicit stuff! Man what I don't know can fill a book or two! I just went back and had a listen not that bad, OK you can make a point but still!

GREASED LIGHTNING uses the term "(@$%&#!) WAGON".

This isn't true. The white gangstas that hang out with the black guys are free to use the word as well. You just have to be in the club

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C Mc
KJ, FL

The All Hits version of Greased Lightnin' has the explicit words of the song and sounds pretty decent.

I tend to use it over other versions.

Are you disappointed that you can't use that word?

Not at all.
It's a word I've never used in my life.
I don't need it for any reason because I feel it's a racist word no matter who is using it and whatever justification they seek to use it. Including making money.

And I just don't like the triple standard. Was that too difficult for you to comprehend?

No, although I'm not sure I agree that it's a "triple" standard.

Your comments made it seem like you're disappointed that, as a white guy, you can't get away with using that word. I'm glad to hear that you're not.

I think, however, that it's only a double standard if you completely ignore the context of race relations in this country.

The word is offensive in the mouth of a white person because of the power white people once held (and to some extent still do) over black people. There is no special power in that word by itself, but in the mouth of a white person it recalls centuries of slavery and involuntary servitude, followed by a century of official discrimination, followed by a half-century of unofficial discrimination and strife--in short, a belief on the part of the speaker that he is inherently more of a human being than the person of whom he speaks.

A black person doesn't stand on the "power" side of the race relations of the last 500 years, so that word can never have that visceral power, coming out of his mouth. It means something different because of who he is. I don't think we can ignore that.

But what you're advocating is the perpetuation of a lack of "race relations" in this country rather than the elimination of racial differences. I opt to eliminate racial differences. A man is a man... not a "black man" or a "white man" or "yellow" or "red."

Cry and moan all you want about slavery... that's been over for over 150 years. Civil rights were enacted in the 60's (more than 50 years ago) and I don't use the word by choice: I believe it to be racist no matter the color of the mouth that speaks it or the reasoning behind speaking it.

I don't care if a karaoke song (9 inch nails comes to mind) has profanity in it, I'm more turned off by the racist remarks.

But with either one, a good measure of decorum is warranted by the KJ in any situation. I don't buy the "it's in the book so I can sing" excuse and I don't buy the "everyone's over 21 here" excuse either. I especially don't buy the "sorry, I was drunk" excuse.

To put that in perspective, though... at the recent opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the daughter of someone born a slave helped ring the bell to dedicate the museum.

I mean, we're told to "remember the Alamo," but that was over thirty years earlier than the end of the Civil War. And my parents--and I'm sure some of the posters here--were alive when Emmett Till was murdered in 1955.

I know none of this strictly focuses on using the n-word in karaoke (I'm against it, too), but the "it was so long ago" argument doesn't hold weight when we still see the ramifications of Slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow in the news every day.

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Co-host of The Greatest Song Ever Sung (Poorly), a karaoke-themed podcast

I dunno, man, the whole "oh, they can use it but I can't?" argument is a hollow one to me. It's another in a long, long line of incredibly silly, reactionary comments white people too often use to revert the conversation back to themselves. I shared something with a "black lives matter" slogan on social media and found myself under fire from a distant, racist relative. "It's RACIST! If I said WHITE LIVES MATTER, everyone would call ME a racist!" Under what circumstances would you feel the need to say white lives matter? "That's not even the point, the point is IF I DID, I couldn't, because everyone would call me a racist!"

It's the same logic. You can't say that the permutation of the n-word used in rap music is racist, because if it's largely accepted in that culture's vernacular and you are not a part of that culture, that's not really your call. And discussing it in terms of how it affects you - i.e., "if I as a white man said that everyone would lose their minds" - really isn't the point, is it? Isn't that kind of viewing black culture through the prism of what it means to a white person and not, you know, just letting it exist on its own?

If you listen to the words to the musical version of greased lightning, it's quite explicit.

"With new pistons, rods and shocks, i can really get off my rocks"
"Your are supreme, the chicks will cream for grease lightning"

and the one lonman already mentioned "you know that i ain't braggin', she's a real *ussy wagon - Greased lightning"