Kiese Laymon: Telling Hard Truths (Staying Soft)

Call & Response

Author Kiese Laymon recently got into a twitter dust up about the eternal question, Outkast v. The Beatles. He wrote, “Beatles stole southern Black and added it to British white. Outkast stole Mars and added it to southern urban Black. Outkast wins.” After reading more of what Kiese had to say about the appropriation of Black southern music, Adia knew she needed to bring him on the show. Their conversation unfolds over how Outkast created new space for southern hip hop, what Adia learned from watching the Derek Chauvin trial, and what hip hop itself can learn from the blues. For the playlist of songs curated for this week's episode, head over to http://bit.ly/cr-kiese.

/ Music In This Week's Playlist /

Rich Boy, “Throw Some Ds”
Goodie Mob, “Cell Therapy”
Trina, “The Baddest Bitch”
Lucille Bogan, “Shave ‘Em Dry”
Nappy Roots, “Awnaw”
Ludacris, Field Mob feat Jamie Foxx, “Georgia”
Arthur Alexander, “Anna (Go To Him)”

/ Show Notes /

Kiese Laymon is the author of the genre-bending novel, Long Division and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

Link to the tweet that launched this episode.

Watch Outkast win best new artist at the 1995 Source Awards.

Scholar Regina N. Bradley’s book is Chronicling Stankonia, and you can read Kiese’s essay about OutKast ‘Da Art of Storytelling (A Prequel) in Oxford American.

/ Credits /

Call & Response is a Sonos show produced by work x work: Scott Newman, Jemma Rose Brown, Adia Victoria, Babette Thomas and Megan Lubin. Our engineers are Sam Bair and Josh Hahn of The Relic Room.