In this episode, I dive into the recent backlash against Nigerian artist Asake for using Yoruba on his Gunna feature and why the anger reveals something deeper: our communities are still wrestling with internalised anti-Black linguistic racism, a legacy of colonial language control that refuses to die quietly.
I unpack the colonial history that positioned European languages like English as the “proper” or “respectable” choice while devaluing African and Caribbean languages as inferior or unprofessional. We explore how this thinking lingers today, even within Black spaces, when artists unapologetically use their native tongues.
Fresh back from Antigua, I reflect on what it meant to be fully submerged in Blackness: walking through spaces where the majority looks like you, where Caribbean English Creole flows without side-eyes or corrections, where music is drenched in local expressions and history. And I ask why, in Britain and beyond, Black language still needs to fight for space when it is the heartbeat of our culture.
From Yoruba in Afrobeats to patois in dancehall to Black British English in grime, this episode is about how music has always been a site of linguistic preservation and resistance and why every verse, every hook, every bassline that carries our words is a pushback against the colonial idea that only one kind of English is valid.
Because when we lose a language, we do not just lose words. We lose ways of seeing the world. And we are not letting that happen.
What do a courtroom in 1979 Michigan and a government report in 1985 Britain have in common? The answer: Black language, and the systems that tried to silence it.
This episode dives into why the way we speak is about so much more than grammar — it’s about race, power, and who gets to be heard. From the Ann Arbor AAVE case to the Swan Report in the UK, we’re looking at how schools, governments, and institutions have treated Black English as a problem instead of a culture.
Language isn’t neutral. And in this episode, we’re saying it plainly: language justice is racial justice.
What does it mean to speak the future while carrying the past? In this episode, we dive into Black British English as an Afrofuturist language, one shaped by migration, resistance, and imagination. We explore how the hybrid dialects of Black Britain remix ancestral languages, colonizer tongues, and global Black languages to create something radically new: a sonic space where survival and style converge.
Using the visionary work of Janelle Monáe especially her android mythology via albums like The ArchAndroid and Dirty Computer we think through how language itself can be cyborg, insurgent, and speculative. Just like Monáe constructs a Black queer future through sound, costume, and narrative, Black British English crafts a world beyond Empire through voice and vernacular.
From “mandem” to “allow it,” every utterance becomes a glitch in linear time, a tool for refusing the present and imagining otherwise.
This episode asks: What does our accent say about our future? And how do we use language to hack the system just like Janelle does?
What if Jamaican Patwa and West African Pidgin aren’t broken English but living African languages?
After my viral interview with Professor Hubert Devonish on the Caribbean roots of words like “pikini” and “sabi”, the diaspora responded with love — but not without backlash. Some people in the comments called us liars and a conversation about language and unity became distracted by a fight about identity.
This podcast is my response.
Join me as I unpack why I stand by the theory that Caribbean languages like Patwa and surinamese creole carry a deep African linguistic history seen in west African pidgins till today! It is the reason why we must unlearn colonial ideas about what counts as “proper” language.
We’ll explore linguistic resistance, the Middle Passage, and how African languages didn’t die they adapted, survived, and returned.
This is about more than words. It’s about memory, power, and reclaiming what’s ours.
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In this podcast episode, I talk about all things wrong with non-Black people jumping aboard and on the “God Forbid Challenge” currently trending on social media. I take you through a range of issues mentioned below too, including:
1. Accent Discrimination- Research shows that attention to linguistic cues like accents may be more potent than visual cues like skin color (Kinzler et al., 2007, 2009) when it comes to discrimination.
2. Blaccent Blackface- the phenomena of white people temporarily inhabiting a Black persona for a saucy tweet or comedic Instagram caption. When white people do this, not only are they making the uncomfortable choice to act like something they are not, they suggest that Blackness is something to be slipped in and out of: donned when it’s time to make your followers laugh or see you differently, and shorn when it’s time to be taken seriously- Study Breaks, Imani Benberry
So settle, get ready to learn and most of all share.
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This episode is all about my visit to the Jamaican Language Unit (JLU) at the University of the West Indies, Mona—and trust me, it was a beautiful experience! I got to sit down with Professor Hubert Devonish, the man behind it all, to talk about his work globally and locally on giving Jamaican Patois the recognition and flowers it deserves and the push to make Patois an official language.
If you’ve ever wondered about the work being done to preserve and promote Caribbean languages on the islands this one’s for you. Tune in for all my reflections from my trip.
Further links-
JAMAICAN LANGUAGE UNIT WEBSITE- https://www.mona.uwi.edu/dllp/jlu/background
Swan report- https://education-uk.org/documents/swann/swann1985.html
