Noname - Sundial (August 11, 2023) • Page 4

ItsAndrew · Aug 19, 2023

I’m at Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap anniversary show right now and he brought out Noname and then after she performed told the whole crowd how amazing Sundial is and to go stream it immediately.

I would have been very hyped about her appearance if not for the ridiculous Jay bullshit.

Zilla · Aug 19, 2023

Yeah, sadly I would not expect Chance to care.

ItsAndrew · Aug 20, 2023

I feel like you exist on two unique intersections. Somebody who takes up this mantle and calls out everybody. How do you kind of deal with that? What does accountability look like for you? And how do you filter when something is criticism or when people are just trolling you?
That’s hard, because sometimes I don’t really know. Usually when it comes to accountability, I think this goes for literally anybody, the person has to want to be accountable. So with me, it is going to be case-by-case because some things, like even with the Jay Electronica [verse], I’m not sorry. I’m gonna just face the repercussions of maybe losing a large swath of my fan base, but it is what it is.

Now for other things that I’ve done in the past, I have legitimately been sorry for. I tried to be accountable. But that’s also the other thing because it’s, like, accountable to who? The internet?

A lot of the time, I think about my community. Those are the people who hold me accountable, the people who I’m actually in the real world with, and they have a vested interest in my accountability process and me actually becoming a better person. That, I think, necessitates real change. Me saying sorry to people online… they’re not checking me. They’re not being like, “hey, I thought she said she was gonna stop drinking. Like, I see you back on it. Like, what’s up?” People in my community who I see day to day, they want to do that for me.

I feel like that's what you've been telling us the whole time, that you are human. You have a lot of commonalities with a lot of the people that you either hold accountable or have had skirmishes with like J. Cole. Ultimately you both are expressing the same sentiment about being aware, but also rejecting being placed on a pedestal.
That whole situation was so interesting because it really was not a beef. It was a conversation between two rappers who are on the same side of the spectrum of hip hop. I’d say people place J. Cole in the conscious bubble and they place me as a conscious rapper too. And so we had an ideological disagreement over some dope instrumentals. That’s it. It’s no real beef between us.

actually hit him up to see if he could pop out for the [Sundial] Block Party, but he wasn’t able to [make it]. I was trying to get him to be on the “special guests” roster. But he hit me back and it was like all love and he’s super supportive. He was like, “let me know how to support the event. I’ll try to donate to the prison chapters”

The beauty of hip hop is that we can hold each other accountable and have certain kinds of conversations. So even with the pushback I’m getting for including Jay Electronica on my shit, I’m not really mad at it. I think it’s important. We do need to have a conversation in the Black community about antisemitism and why it’s running rampant, or why we feel comfortable with certain aspects of the Nation. It’s like, how are we going to be in the room and even have these conversations, if we’re not willing to be in the room with certain kinds of people.

Have you had any conversations with any Jewish people about the Jay Electronica verse specifically?
In person? Not in person.

Even among Black Jewish people?
No. I’m sure it’ll happen at some point. It’s also like the album just came out a few days ago. I haven’t really been out and about, but usually that’s more like an online thing. Anything I’ve ever done, it’s very rare that someone will comment about it in-person to me. Like, it’s almost never happened. Unless, like I said, it’s *****s who I’m actually in community with. And they actually have a vested interest in seeing me change because they’re in physical spaces with me.

If I’m thinking about all the things that people have been mad at me about, like weighing them up against actual harm, I haven’t really caused anybody harm. People are upset about my opinions. There’s no allegations [against me]. There’s no nothing out there that’s actually violent about me. I haven’t done any harm to anybody. I’m just opinionated, and people don’t like it. They don’t like the opinions.

If you take a moment and listen to “Balloons,” and look at the very particular kind of people who's critiquing you the loudest, that song is really talking about those very same people.
It is. I find it very convenient that they ignore my whole second verse and just only talk about Jay [Electronica]. I’m literally aiming the whole verse at them. You can take me rapping about all these people dying, but this other side of Blackness, this more unpalatable side, y’all can’t take it. OK.

A lot of the harshest critics seem to be white men.
Yeah, which is interesting. White men make up the bulk of hip hop consumers in this country, I would say. But again, if someone made a song, and I felt like there was anti-Black sentiment in it, maybe I wouldn’t want to listen to it. But at the same time, I think there’s a lot of anti-Black sentiment in most hip hop. When *****s is rapping about certain shit, like, who their OP is, [and it’s] another Black person, you doing f*cked up shit to Black people. I still see that as kind of anti-Black. I’m not gonna hold you. I don’t see it as just, “oh, it’s ‘cause we in the same community. I don’t see it as that bad.” Nah. You’re trying to be disruptive to Black life. I don’t give a f*ck if you Black or not. Why are you doing it? But at the same time, I get where it comes from.

With the antisemitic shit, I wonder if people are going to really try to just understand where it comes from. Like, why [do] so many Black people feel like that? Why [does] that type of rhetoric spread as quickly as it does in certain spaces in our community?

OotyPa · Aug 20, 2023

It really hurts to read those answers, as a Jewish person.

ItsAndrew · Aug 22, 2023

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