Sometimes violence isn’t the answer. Other times, an aggressive, slurring stranger is screaming the n-word at teenagers on a New York subway and jumping up and down like a badly behaved toddler, and you’re Princess Nokia, queen of our hearts and creator of banging tunes, and you have a cup of hot soup, so you do what you have to do.
In a video posted on Twitter earlier yesterday, the rapper is seen among a group of vigilante citizens who attempt to throw a racist off a subway train, as he repeatedly shouts offensive slurs at other passengers, and at the singer herself. Captioned “New Yorkers kicking racists ass one at a time,” it shows Princess Nokia eventually snapping, throwing hot soup — potentially chicken or lentil, potentially vegetable, very yellow — over the guy as he’s pushed out of the carriage.
While the footage is blurry, the 1992 Deluxe musician quickly confirmed it was her on Twitter. In a series of tweets explaining the context of the clip and talking about the prevalence of casual racism in 2017, she wrote: “Although painful and humiliating, we stood together and kicked this disgusting racist off the train so we could ride in peace away from him. And yes I threw hot soup in this man’s face and kicked him off off the train, and kicked [him] in the face. Any other racists wanna try us again?”
She went on to explain how she slapped the man after he called her the n-word, and was backed up by fellow passengers.“I witness blatant racism in public constantly, and it is heartbreaking to witness such hatred and bigotry go undefended”, she said. “It take[s] a lot of risks trying to stand up to racist & bigots. I will do anything to defend the honor of my brothers and sisters #blacklivesmatter.”
It’s not the first time Princess Nokia has stood up to bigotry; at a show earlier this year at Cambridge University she punched a member of the audience for shouting sexist comments, telling the crowd: “That’s what you do when a white boy disrespects you.”