You may recall a viral diatribe last October from a Christian mother of four who was none too happy with Vince Staples' song "Norf Norf" after she said she heard it on the radio. What resulted was her going on an 11-minute rant. "This is on our local radio station, this crap is being played," she said at the time. "I couldn’t even believe the words that I was listening to. As a mom, it infuriated me.” She also repeated uncensored lyrics which included use of the n-word, and worked herself up to the verge of tears.
If you want to hear her recite some of those lyrics, here they are to the original beat because this is the internet:
Staples went on to defend the woman, saying he was misquoted about his initial reaction, and that she was just confused about the track. "What I was saying was that the woman in that video is clearly confused on the context of the song which causes her to be frightened," he said in tweets that have since been deleted. "She also, in my opinion, seems to be emotionally unstable." He further clarified that she has a right to an opinion and shouldn't be attacked for that. He ended his half-a-dozen tweet spree by saying, "That's all I have to say about that. Stop asking me."
Well, as it turns out, he still has a few more things to say about it. At least, according to an NPR interview that was published on Sunday afternoon. Asked about the six-month old footage, and particularly his defense of her, Staples said, "She was right."
Obviously the interviewer followed up by asking what she was right about, which drew a (much) longer response from Staples.
"I don't really care what's on the radio because the radio's kind of secondary to how we consume music in today's day and age. But what she said, "this is what our children are being exposed to"? She's right. That's what the song is about: what our children are being exposed to.
"My question is, why can we listen to that and pass it off like it's not a problem? When you see a film and you see a murder scene or a rape scene or something that's displaying an element of trauma, we don't look at it and go, "This movie's f****** great, I'm having a great time, are you?" We feel for that. Know what I'm saying? But it doesn't necessarily happen in that sense when we're speaking about music. So I didn't make that song for it to make people happy. So I don't have a problem with what she said. You got a reaction — isn't that the point, essentially?"
He also explained why he didn't join the massive volume of people ganging up on her. "It's pathetic to attack someone for having an opinion or feeling some type of way, for wanting her children to not be exposed to something," he said. "'Cause I'm 100 percent sure my mother would have loved for her children to not be exposed to gang life. The difference is it wasn't on the radio — it was in our house, and it was outside, and it was at our schools, and it was at our churches, it was everywhere that we were. So it was kind of a little bit harder."
From there, he made it clear that people writing her off without even thinking about her opinion were worse than she is. Which, frankly, is something that can be applied to a lot of content on the internet. Many writers included. "But when you have people who are able to, you know, just write people off as if they don't have an opinion or feelings or motives behind the things they say, that's the corny part," he said. "You're worse than her because she shared her opinion."
"She never said one negative thing about me. At all," he continued. "Her statement was that she doesn't understand how this is getting to major airwaves — which is debatable, it's fair for her to feel that way. And most of [all], she kind of felt bad about the fact that it was possible that these things could really happen."
The 23-year-old rapper also talked about a number of other topics, including his Long Beach roots and his plans for the future. Check the rest of it out over at NPR.
