Reminder: Tomorrow is the final day to listen to Young Jeezy’s “My President Is Black”

Reminder: Tomorrow is the final day to listen to Young Jeezy’s “My President Is Black”

A Facebook group is commemorating tomorrow as “The last day to play Jeezy’s “My President Is Black.” It is worth heeding. The track, which is actually just called “My President,” was recorded by Jeezy and Nas on the day Barack Obama became the official Democratic nominee for president, but it was an anthem throughout the year, becoming increasingly profound as the election of the country’s first black president started to look like a possibility within our time-space continuum.

Finishing off Jeezy’s 2008 masterpiece The Recession—which chronicled, with Jeezy’s characteristic empathy, the aftermath of the housing market’s collapse—“My President” positioned Obama’s presidency as a much-needed ray of light for the country. Nas shows up to drop a weird double-time verse at the end (his flow was going through an off phase at the time), but his presence makes the track a triumphal hand-holding moment between one of rap’s most storied lyricists and one of its most populist radio stars. Last month, Ta-Nehisi Coates evoked the track with the title for his almost elegiac Obama retrospective, “My President Was Black.”

For at least a day, though, he still is. As the Facebook invite notes:

Because it’s our civic duty, I am inviting everyone in America to listen to Jeezy’s “My President” — his 2008 magnum opus that also features Nas because why not? — as many times as you physically can stand to do so. Put it on a playlist. Sing it as loud as you can. Blast it at your job, your home… hell, if you’re a teacher, play it in class and tell the principal you’re doing a civics lesson or something, I dunno.

It’s time for one last celebration with Jeezy. Fortunately, rapper YG has already written an anthem welcoming incoming president Donald Trump.

Play that one as many times as you can stand it on Friday.

 
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