Muhammad Ali: A black boy the world couldn't ignore

One of my favourite Jay Electronica songs, Patents of Nobility, starts and ends with snippets from an old Muhammad Ali interview. The title of the song is in reference to royal letters that raises an individual to the peerage. Jay Elec positions the song itself as his own letter, and chooses Ali to be the governing body which signs off on it.

Ali is inseparable from rap to me, at least when he was still a boxer. A young black man boasting of his talents, his exceptionalism, religion, beauty and his ability to do the impossible, often in rhyme -- it's the blueprint for the genre.

The song's intro starts with Ali exclaiming that while Catholics and Protestants are fighting, they are still able to negotiate business deals without being called hypocrites. There's a prompting question, but it's not included in the clip. He says the same of Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong being enemies, yet still wanting to work together. Finally he turns it on himself, asking why is he considered a hypocrite for having a white employee when he lives in an all-white country and for having white fans. At this stage, the interviewer gets flustered and asks Ali to read his book.

Ali responds that he has read it. Then Ali calls out the man's failure. That the interviewer is not used to a black man, mainly a boxer, having sense, before stating that he, Ali, is not just a boxer, that he's been taught by Elijah Muhammad; that he can talk all week on a million number of subjects and that the interviewer does not have enough wisdom to challenge him. "You are too small mentally to tackle me on nothing that I represent."

The song is Jay Electronica at his finest. It's one verse that's packed with references to the black struggle: "I went from nothing to something like the Planet Earth." To Christian religiosity: "I showed these major labels how to make a man from dirt/ and breathe in his nostrils/ fill him up with Gospel..."

An ode to Louisiana, where he's from and its obscure religious practices: "Who that? Jay Elec Voodoo Man/ From the lost land of Mu/ sands the Zulu scanned."

And of course, an anti-government political statement: "I be in New Orleans making water out of whiskey/ Casting judgements on the IRS who audited the gypsies/ Tipsy"

Jay Electronica is a follower of the Nation of Islam, as Ali was, and the song serves as his own proclamation of being more than his vocation. As Ali invoked Elijah Muhammad, Jay Elec often does the same with Louis Farrakhan. In that one verse, he also explores a million number of subjects and at one point, states that he will spit the truth until, "they strip me/ crown me with thorns/ march me up the hill, crucifix me then ditch me…"

The fall of the idol. Not unlike Ali who went through a less significant but similar ordeal after refusing to serve in the military. A position he justified by asking why should he sacrifice his black life for the same country that sees no value in it and refuses to grant him the rights and freedom that others enjoy. You can only serve a country that serves you.

The imagery of the crucifixion also works well in the thought of Ali's sacrifices and his greater influence as well. His fight for identity and his personhood in a time when blacks were barely seen as human was immense, and his utter refusal to be diminished or categorized gave an unquantifiable amount of hope to future generations. Generations that still face the same fight. He serves as a beacon of light for them.

The clear problem with having idols is that one dehumanizes them easily. It's impossible not to strip them of their humanity. In our eyes, they're perfect, or rather, they have to be perfect and we often overlook their flaws, vices and sometimes criminal behaviour to keep their ideal image in our minds.

The other side is that we need idols to have a greater goal to aspire to. Children learn from imitation. We copy styles, attitudes and behaviours of our heroes, and while it's impossible to become them, adopting their best characteristics in mixture with your own goals and dreams is a huge step in developing a personal identity.

From Jay Electronica to Floyd Mayweather, Prince, Adrien Broner, Kanye West, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, Beyonce, Randy Moss, Usain Bolt, Jay Z, and almost all black athletes and artists you can name, Ali has had an influence on them. It goes up to the heights of Barack Obama and it goes down to the most ordinary lives of regular black people and children in some of the most forgotten places in the United States and the world. We're all his imperfect clones. Some closer than others.

I never knew Ali as a boxer, he retired before I was born. But I share a birthday with him, so I read and watched all of his interviews. I poured countless hours into learning everything about him. I knew him as an icon, as a hero, and as a friend. I saw him as someone who didn't beg to be seen as who he was, but one that demanded the recognition. One who would force you to see him in all his might and struggles. A black boy who the world couldn't ignore. A man who contained multitudes which were all intertwined in a muscular, tall body which he described with feminine words. Beautiful. Pretty.

Someone who talked the talk and then walked the walk, but also made it clear, with his refusal of the military especially, that sometimes you have to talk to make sure that others don't force you to walk for them.

I knew him as a militant man, in identity, religion, race and from what I watched and heard about his athletic life. It was no surprise to me that at one point, he was very close to Malcolm X. That confident, intelligent, self-assured and actualized style of being is unmistakable in both, even if it is divisive by nature. It's a self that's impossible to break from the outside.

That personality shows in the outro to the Jay Elec song when he lashes out at the interviewer's attempt to trap and embarrass him. He asks his interlocutor rhetorically: "How you gon' trap me? How you gon' get me on TV and trap me?"

He then goes on to expose the interviewer's true motives. To attack his religion, to turn his white friends against him, saying that if he wasn't prepared, as the interviewer assumed he wouldn't be, that he would have surely been made to look the fool. The interviewer begins to laugh nervously, and the song ends with Ali saying: "You laugh now because I caught ya."

I barely knew him as a boxer, but I did know Muhammad Ali, all sides of him, as the greatest noble of our time.