Historian vs. Pop Musician, part 1

Came across a song to rival the horribleness (and length, 9+ minutes) of Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop.” It’s Eugene Daniels’ “The Parasite” (which doesn’t even make sense, as it’s about North American settlers, plural), which apparently comes from an actually released major label album. This song equals Suicide’s for its amateurish sound, monumentally stupid lyrics, and a tone-deaf singing style remarkably similar to Shatner’s interpretation of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” What “The Parasite” lacks in pretension it makes up for in condescension. But the reason I’m writing about it is its historical subject matter, the bone-headedness of which gave me an idea: commenting on the admittedly rare historical pop song from a historian’s perspective. That one’s gonna take some work to do, so I’ll do a short one first: The third section from Nas's kiddie singalong "I Can," which I like, is the only historical portion of the song. I am unfortunately working from the [clean version].

Before we came to this country/
We were kings and queens/
No, your ancestors were not kings and queens, or likely anyone with even a modicum of political power. In most cases those sold into slavery were the weakest and most vulnerable members of various West and Central African societies: outcasts, criminals, debtors, soldiers, children, peasants. In fact, the African population who ended up in North America was pretty much analogous to the European immigrant population; the whites, for the most part, were from the same lower class positions. I don’t know why you’d want to claim a royal background anyway, Nas; isn’t that sort of society even more exploitative and unfair than our own?
Never porch monkeys.
You shouldn’t resurrect this, even for the sake of a rhyme, because it reminds racists.
There was empires in Africa called Kush, Timbuktu/
Again, I know all the models of “historical greatness,” at least as popularized, include past empires as a measure of a people (whatever that means), but are you enamored of the American empire today? Really, you seem sold on inequality and exploitation as good things, confusing might with right. (Note: Kush flourished 10th century – 7th century BCE. Timbuktu wasn’t an empire, but an important city in a series of Sahel empires, flourishing 13th – 16th c CE.)
Where every race came to get books/
To learn from black teachers/
Who taught Greeks and Romans/
Asians, Arabs/
“Every race” stretches the truth, since I doubt any Chinese or Amerindians studied there, but considering the inter-connectedness of the Islamic world during Timbuktu’s heyday, there might very well have been an Indonesian or two who traveled that far. And yes, Timbuktu was renowned as a center of learning among Muslims, famous for its scholars and manuscripts. Anachronistic: the Greek and Roman empires disappeared several hundred years before Timbuktu was even built. I guess it’s possible that early modern Greeks might’ve traveled there, as they were Ottoman (Muslim) subjects at the beginning of Timbuktu’s decline, but Nas means the ancient Greeks, ‘cause they were “great”.
And gave them gold. When/
I seriously doubt the teachers gave the students gold. It’s the other way around. In fact, book-selling was one of the most profitable trades in Timbuktu.
Gold was converted to money/
It all changed.
Anachronistic: Gold was first made into money early in the second millennium BCE, including in Egypt, though I’m not sure when (or if) minting coins began in West Africa. (Slabs of salt, gold dust, and cowrie shells were the currency there in the early modern period. Meanwhile, in East Africa, there were cities minting their own gold coins.)
Money then became empowerment for Europeans.
The gold from West Africa did supply Europe with some of its specie before the rise of Western European powers (the English slang “guinea” for coins indicates at least partial African origins for their money) , but that gold was very expensive, and in fact some of the Portuguese missions down the west coast of Africa were undertaken in an attempt to cut out the North African middlemen. And it is true, that Western European credit systems enabled slave (and other) trading in West Africa from the 15th c CE, but the wealth that really empowered Europeans came from the Americas.
The Persian military invaded/
Anachronistic: Nas! This was the 6th c BCE, and limited to Egypt.
They heard about the gold/
The teachings/
And everything sacred/
Africa was almost robbed naked.
Now you’re denying both African resistance (some Africans fought against the slave trade) and African complicity (other Africans did virtually all the capturing of slaves) in the Atlantic slave trade, which began in the 15th c CE.
Slavery was money/
So they began making slave ships.
Persians?! Your antecedent is unclear, Nas. Slave ships—for transporting slaves, as opposed to those powered by slave labor—were mostly a feature of the last 600 years, and besides, pre-modern enslavement was not exclusive to Africans (obvious from the fact that the root word of “slave” is the same word as “Slav.”).
Egypt was the place that Alexander the Great went/
Back to the 4th c BCE!
He was shocked that the mountains were black faces.
No he wasn’t. The Greeks considered Egyptians as among the most “civilized” people in their world.
Shot off they nose/
Anachronistic: Guns didn’t appear around the Mediterranean until 1500 years after Alexander’s invasion. You’re confusing this invasion with events in the 19th century, where European imperial agents are reputed to have chiseled away the noses on paintings of ancient Egyptians, because they looked too “black” to fit within the Europeans’ racist worldview.
To impose/
What basically/
Still goes on today you see...
Agreed.