Lemon Andersen performs "Please don't take my Air Jordans"

267,296 views ・ 2012-12-07

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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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"My Air Jordans cost a hundred with tax.
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My suede Starters jacket says Raiders on the back.
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I'm stylin', smilin', lookin' real mean,
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because it ain't about being heard, just being seen.
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My leather Adidas baseball cap matches
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my fake Gucci backpack. (Laughter)
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Ain't nobody who looks as good as me,
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but this costs money, it sure ain't free,
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and I gots no job, no money at all,
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but it's easy to steal all this from the mall.
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Parents say I shouldn't, but I knows I should.
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Got to do what I can to make sure I look good,
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and the reason I have to look real good, well, to tell you the truth, man,
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I don't know why. Guess it makes me feel special inside.
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When I'm wearing fresh gear I don't have to hide,
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and I really must get some new gear soon
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or my ego will pop like a 10-cent balloon.
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But security is tight at all the shops. Every day there are more and more cops.
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My crew is laughing at me because I'm wearing old gear.
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School's almost over. Summer is near.
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And I'm sportin' torn Jordans.
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I need something new. Only one thing left to do.
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Cut school Friday, catch the subway downtown,
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check out my victims hangin' around.
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Maybe I'll get lucky and find easy prey.
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Got to get some new gear. There's no other way.
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I'm ready and willing. I'm packing my gun.
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This is serious business. This ain't no fun.
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And I can't have my posse laughin' at me.
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I'mma cop something dope, just wait, you'll see.
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Come out of the station, West 4th near the park,
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brothers shooting hoops and someone remarks,
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'Hey homes, where you get them Nik's?'
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I says to myself, 'Yeah. I likes 'em, I likes.'
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They were Q-tip white, bright and blinding my eyes.
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The red emblem of Michael looked as if it could fly.
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Not one spot of dirt. The Airs were brand new.
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Had my pistol and knew just what to do.
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Waited until it was just the right time, followed him very closely behind.
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He made a left turn on Houston, I pulled out my gun,
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and I said, 'Gimme them Jordans!'
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And the punk tried to run.
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Took off fast, didn't get far. I fired,'Pow!'
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Fool fell between two parked cars.
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He was coughing, crying, blood spilled on the street.
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And I snatched them Air Jordans off of his feet.
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While laying there dying, all he could say
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was, "Please man, don't take my Air Jordans away."
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You'd think he'd be worried about staying alive.
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As I took off with his sneakers, there was tears in his eyes.
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Very next day, I bopped into school
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with my brand new Air Jordans, man, I was cool.
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I killed to get 'em, but hey, I don't care,
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because now I needs a new jacket to wear."
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Thank you. (Applause)
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For the last 15 years that I have been performing,
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all I ever wanted to do was transcend poetry to the world.
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See, it wasn't enough for me to write a book.
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It wasn't enough for me to join a slam competition,
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and while those things hold weight,
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it wasn't the driving force that pushes the pen to the pad.
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The hunger and thirst was, and still remains:
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How do I get people who hate poetry
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to love me?
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Because I'm an extension of my work,
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and if they love me, then they will love my work,
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and if they love my work, then they will love poetry,
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and if they love poetry, then I will have done my job,
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which is to transcend it to the world.
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And in 1996, I found the answer in principles
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in a master spoken-word artist named Reg E. Gaines,
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who wrote the famous poem, "Please Don't Take My Air Jordans."
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And I followed this guy everywhere until I had him in the room,
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and I read him one of my pieces,
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and you know what he told me?
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"Yo' wack.
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You know what the problem is with you, homie?
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You don't read other people's poetry,
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and you don't got any subordination for verbal measures
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to tonal consideration." (Laughter)
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Now he kept on rambling
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about poetry and styles and Nuyorican Friday nights.
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Now I could have quit. I should have quit.
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I mean, I thought poetry was just self-expression.
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I didn't know you actually have to have creative control.
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So instead of quitting, I followed him everywhere.
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When he was writing a Broadway show, I would be outside of the door.
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I would wake him up at, like, 6:30 in the morning
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to ask him who's the best poet.
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I remember eating the eyes of a fish right out of the sea
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because he told me it was brain food.
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Then one day I told him,
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"Reg E., what is subordination for verbal measures to tonal consideration?" (Laughter)
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And he handed me a black-and-white printed out thesis
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on a poet named Etheridge Knight
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and the oral nature of poetry,
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and from that point,
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Reggie stopped becoming the best to me,
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because what Etheridge Knight taught me
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was that I could make my words sound like music,
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even my small ones, the monosyllables,
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the ifs, ands, buts, whats,
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the gangsta in my slang could fall right on the ear,
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and from then on, I started chasing Etheridge Knight.
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I wanted to know which poet he read,
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and I landed on a poem called ["Dark Prophecy: Sing of Shine"],
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a toast signifying that got me on the biggest stage
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a poet could ever be:
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Broadway, baby.
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And from that point, I learned how to pull the mic away
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and attack the poetry with my body.
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But that wasn't the biggest lesson I ever learned.
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The biggest lesson I learned was many years later
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when I went to Beverly Hills and I ran into a talent agent
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who looked at me up and down
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and said I don't look like I have any experience
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to be working in this business.
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And I said to him, "Listen, punk fool,
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you're a failed actor who became an agent,
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and you know why you failed as an actor?
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Because people like me took your job.
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I've traveled all the way from Cleveland and Essex
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in East New York, took the local 6 line up to the hookers of Hunt's Point
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who were in my way on my way to master the art of space,
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and the one-to-infinite amount of man, woman and child
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you can fit in there only so I can push them
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to the back of the wall with my experience.
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People have bought tickets to my experience
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and used them as refrigerator magnets to let them know
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that the revolution is near, so stock up.
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I'm so experienced that when you went
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to a privileged school to learn a Shakespearean sonnet,
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I was getting those beats kicked and shoved into me.
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I can master shock of "The Crying Game" with the awe
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of a child being called an AIDS victim by a bully who didn't know
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that it was his father who gave it to my mother,
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and that's a double entendre.
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I'm so experienced that when you went to the Fell School
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and all the rich little fairy boys decided to sponsor a child
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in it, that was me, but kicked me out when I was caught
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teaching the fairy boys how to rob the PATS off a pair of Lee Jeans
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and bring them to VIM. Let me see Chekhov pull that off.
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Sanford Meisner was my Uncle Artie yelling silently to himself,
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"Something's always wrong when nothing's always right."
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Method acting is nothing but a mixture
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of multiple personalities, believing your own lies are reality,
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like in high school cool Kenny telling me he wanted to be a cop.
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Dude, you go to Riker's Island Academy.
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I could make David Mamet
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psychoanalyze my attack on dialogue,
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Stanislavski be as if he were Bruce Lee
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kicking your roster of talentless students up and down Crenshaw.
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So what, your actors studied guerrilla theater at the London Rep?
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Let me tell you an ancient Chinese Saturday afternoon
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kung fu secret.
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Boards don't hit back.
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You think black entertainers have it hard finding work
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in this business? I'm a suspicious mulatto,
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which means I'm too black to be white and too white to be doing it right.
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Forget the American ghetto. I've cracked stages in Soweto,
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buried abortion babies in potter's field and still managed to keep a smile on my face,
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so whatever you curse at me to your caddyshack
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go-for-this, go-for-that assistant when I walk out that door,
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whatever slander you send my way,
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your mother.
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Thank you. (Applause)
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