My new Nina Simone essay

Plus, Lil Wayne reminds us, what’s understood ain’t got to be explained

Hi!

Today I’d like to share something extra with you—my new Friday post about Nina Simone and understanding.

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Nina Simone’s 1964 ballad “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” feels timeless. She is looking for understanding—to be seen—by her lover, and perhaps the world.

Over forty years later, Lil Wayne picks up her song, and its themes, in a masterfully poetic dialogue on “Dontgetit,” off one of his best albums, Tha Carter III. (Try listening to it here as you read.)

What’s understood ain’t gotta be explained

While hip hop is built on sampling and remixing, Wayne simply begins the track with 40 seconds of Simone’s crooning (“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good / Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”). Then the beat drops.

When Wayne comes in, he begins where she left off, and continues her motif of a dialogue:

What’s understood ain’t got to be explained / But you don’t understand me, so let me explain

Wayne relates to her feeling of being misunderstood. And he’s assertively telling someone - or us - that he will now explain himself. That’s what this song, and maybe much of his music, is here to do. He continues:

Stood in the heat / the flame / the snow, ‘Please, slow down, hurricane!’ / the wind blows / my dreads swang / ‘he had hair like wool, like Wayne’

So Wayne begins with this audacious, allegorical energy. As a New Orleans resident, he invokes a real hurricane and the way the weather - or God - tests man. Then he compares himself to his God, Jesus, citing Jesus’s appearance, which was part of why he was shunned and misunderstood. The word “wool” might sound ordinary, but like quoting Simone, it’s rooted in Wayne’s knowledge: Revelations states that Jesus’s hair was “like wool,” and uses flame and snow imagery.

Wayne frequently speaks on several levels—he’s inviting us to think of him as a God, or misunderstood like one; and as a man battling the weather (so not a God); and also perhaps as the weather itself, his fiery personality, acting like a hurricane, acting like someone who gets told, “slow down!”

We can tell the biblical references are deliberate as he continues:

“Dropping ashes in the Bible / I shake ‘em out and they fall on the rifle / scary / Hail Mary / no tale fairy / all real very extraordinary / Perry Mason / facing the barrel if he tattle / my God is my judge / no gown, no gavel! / a hound, a rebel / down to battle / now or never, or whenever…

“Dropping ashes in the Bible” continues the theme. He may be literally smoking something and ashing in the Good Book (some might find that sacrilegious), or citing theology about ashes representing death and repentance. Amidst the Hail Marys, Wayne insists his extraordinary visions are real. His verses are not just religious “fairy tales,” but truth.

Then I love how he swiftly shifts from God’s justice to man’s, which echoes the song’s duality between God and man. Wayne cites the TV lawyer Perry Mason - speaking my language here! - facing threats for snitching.

Then he flips it to suggest that whatever men do to judge other men, or imprison and control other men, Wayne rejects that, insisting “my God is my judge.” He doesn’t need a gown, which men put on, to judge and rule over other men.

I’m bright, but…

The verse ends: “I’m bright, but I don’t give a f*** if you see me.”

So Wayne takes it back to Nina Simone. He’s just told us who he is — with style, erudition and deep knowledge. That means he’s bright; smart, noticeable, and shining like an actual star, or the “star” he’s proven to be in music.

If after all that, you still don’t get that, still don’t see him for who he is, then he doesn’t care!

So he shares Simone’s experience of being misunderstood, while she pleaded to be understood, he takes it on with more bravado. I think he’s slyly noting his intelligence is dismissed — how people fail to even see the brightness and intelligence of a famous, successful Black man who writes for a living, but faces negative associations, one-note assumptions, and typical racism.

By proclaiming he doesn’t give a f*** if people see it, he flips the issue back on them. At a certain point, it’s their failure and problem, if they can’t even see the bright star burning in the sky above them.

Nina Simone prayed to her lord for understanding. Wayne already told us he doesn’t think men can really judge other men, doesn’t care about their judgments, as he stands only before God. And his fate is to be misunderstood on earth.

P.S. After the song, Wayne has an extended, spoken word rumination on racism in the prison system — a more literal version of how judgment works on earth — with criticism of police enforcement, mass incarceration and Rev. Sharpton.