Nigga - Cultural Influence

Cultural Influence

The term "nigga, please", first used in the 1970s by comics such as Paul Mooney as "a funny punctuation in jokes about Blacks," is now heard routinely in comedy routines by African Americans. The growing use of the term is often attributed to its ubiquity in modern American hip hop music. Examples include: hip-hop group Niggaz Wit' Attitude (N.W.A.), A Tribe Called Quest's "Sucka Nigga", Notorious B.I.G.'s song, "The Realest Niggaz", Jay-Z's Jigga That Nigga (along with Nigga What, Nigga Who) and Snoop Dogg's For All My Niggaz And Bitches. Ol' Dirty Bastard uses the term 76 times in his Nigga Please album (not including repetitions in choruses). This is reflected in the term's wide use in modern American gang culture. According to a Texas Monthly article about Houston gangs, many Hispanic street gang members call each other niggah.

However, its use has spread beyond North America. The Portuguese comedy group, Gato Fedorento, uses the word nigga in an audio sketch, where the four individuals (all Caucasian) say they are niggas ("I'm nigga, nigga; are you nigga, nigga?"), and end up admitting that they do not know what nigga means, although "people say it's amazing" (since the word isn't familiar for most Portuguese people, and is seen in the sketch simply as a strange-sounding word). Da Weasel later sang a song named "Nigga" in Gato Fedorento's last episode of season 5.

Comedian Chris Rock's routine "Niggas vs. Black People" distinguishes a nigga, which he defined as a "low-expectation-having motherfucker", from a "black person". In contrast, Tupac Shakur distinguished between nigger and nigga: "Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing; niggas is the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs." Tupac, who has been credited with legitimizing the term, said his song N.I.G.G.A. stood for "Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished."