I was very sad to hear Nate Dogg passed. His music was influential in my development as an artist, and helped me bridge the gap between the “high world” of graduate school and the school of the African American street.

I’ve spent much of my talking life trying to merge  “smart” and “ghetto”, and “super black” and “kind of white”.  In my work and performance as Professor, I am often reminded of the difficulties of this kind of dual identity.

I found Nate Dogg’s album, “First We Pray” at a discount music store.  I was working on my thesis project, and immediately knew the album’s title was significant.  The lyrics articulated what I couldn’t.

Thank you Nate Dogg.

Here’s an excerpt from my paper:

First We Pray

I titled my thesis work “First We Pray” to allude to the historic role of spirituality in African American culture, and most obviously because the work begins with a prayer. “First We Pray”, is also the title of a rap song written by Nate Dogg.  In the chorus he sings,  “First we pray, then we ride.”  Although, the song’s lyrics are about preparation for gang violence, I believe that the words clearly articulate a far-reaching phenomenon and profoundly illustrate a kind of radical spirituality.  The same theological notion in Nate Dog’s song has been responsible for fueling many liberation movements throughout the world.  In America, the separation between whites and blacks in the spiritual realm dramatically effected slavery’s end.  Aside from the well-documented legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King and El Hajj Malik Shabazz, the slave insurrectionists were also spiritual leaders. Gabriel Prosser, Demark Vesey, and Nat Turner were slave preachers who were able to read the bible themselves.  After discovering the liberation motif of the bible, they embraced the idea that the kingdom of heaven was not symbolized by peace but by the sword.  The use of cotton and makeshift blood in the decoration of my thesis exhibition pays homage to Nat Turner.  In the story of his rebellion, he stated that after a remarkable vision in 1825, he began to receive strange signs from heaven.   One day while in the fields, he saw blood on the corn, which he took as a sign that his rebellion was to soon begin (Earl, 1993).