"When I interviewed Jay-Z last year, I asked him if he felt creeped out by how many white people seemed to like “N***** in Paris,” and if he’d ever had white people use the word to his face in the course of talking to him about the song, and if he thought maybe the reason white people liked it so much was that they liked having an excuse to say “n****.” This was one of several questions he answered by chuckling and suddenly seeming super-interested in the flavor profile of what he was eating — which in this case was fine, because I was just trying to orchestrate an amusing-postracial-yuks moment I could use in a story and he could tell and wasn’t going to make it that easy for me. But then after a second he told me white people should just call it “Paris.” Then he ate some fish."