Four Women

I was first introduced to Nina Simone's music through hip hop. Upon first hearing Simone's music I reacted in a way similar to Hughes's description above in terms of liking Simone and her music: "If you do--wheee-ouuueu! You do!"

My introduction to Simone through hip hop is representative of larger generational shifts and is inseparable from the ways that hip hop quotes, through sampling, the blues, soul, and jazz. The proliferation of these samples in hip hop has been made visible through the works of producers such as Kanye West, with his signature sped-up soul samples, and the less well known, but arguably more influential work, of producers like J Dilla, among many others.

Covers by hip hop artists of the great works of past generations is less common. Below Reflection Eternal (Talib Kweli and Hi Tek), on their seminal Train of Thought (2000) album, covers Simone's "Four Women." This is how I was introduced to Simone's music.

Here's Reflection Eternal's version, which begins a little over one minute into the last track on the album.



And here is Nina Simone's "Four Women" from the album Let It Be Me (1987). (The song was first released with the 1966 album Wild is the Wind.)




"Four Women" performed live in 1965.



"Four Women" performed live sometime in the 1960s.



In this version of "Four Women" Simone begins by emphasizing that the song is about: "Four women. Four negro women. One, each one with a different color. Each one with a different grade of hair. And one of the women's hair is like mine. Each one with a different background. Four women."

The song was greeted with some controversy when it first came out, as a 1966 article on "Four Women" published in the New York Post discusses (Click on image to enlarge):

Sources

Earl Calwell. "Nina Simone's Lyrics Stir Storm of Protest" in the New York Post (Spetember 2, 1966). Available in the "Nina Simone File," Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture, New York Public Library. Clipping File, 1925-1975.

Langston Hughes. "Nina Simone" in the New York Post (June, 29 1962). Available in the "Nina Simone File," Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture, New York Public Library. Clipping File, 1925-1975.