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Royce Da 5'9" On Eminem, Kaepernick, and Dinner With Racists
In a wide-ranging conversation about race and power, the Detroit MC calls for nuance and understanding — and an NFL players’ strike
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There’s an old parable that tells the story of six blind men examining an elephant. As the tale goes, each of them feels a different part of the pachyderm and then comes to his own conclusion as to the properties of the massive animal. A man touching the tusk compares the beast to a spear, while another flaps the elephant’s ear and concludes that it’s more like a fan. Another man patting its torso compares it to a wall. Of course, all six men are simultaneously right and wrong, hindered by the limits of their perspectives.
Adapting that idea for modern times, different people — whether jurors, witnesses, op-ed writers, or Twitter users — can have dramatically different viewpoints of the same situation. Detroit rap vet Royce Da 5'9" (born Ryan Montgomery) fixated on this theme while creating The Allegory, a soon-to-be-released album thick with examination of race in America from a variety of vantage points.
Subjects like racism, gun violence, and law enforcement have only grown more fractious and bitter as national conversations within the past decade, and yet, Royce’s stances are nuanced, sophisticated, and expressed in powerful bars on his upcoming eighth solo studio album, due to be released February 21.
One of the most powerful statements on The Allegory isn’t even poetry. “Perspective,” an interlude that recreates a memorable talk with Royce’s friend and longtime collaborator Eminem, finds Marshall Mathers reflecting on hot topics, like the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education and the reason White America pushed the button for Elvis but not Black rock pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, in one of his most powerful and direct public statements on race to date.
Both Royce and Em agree that it takes something powerful and visceral, like sports or music, to bring folks together in a world that’s simultaneously more connected and divided than ever. And while they won’t be…
