A number-one on the Billboard R&B chart from 1946. Apparently, this phrase originated in the early 1900s as a racist joke about a slave stealing chickens. An excerpt here from ‘Everybody’s Magazine’ from 1908: A Southerner, hearing a great commotion in his chicken-house one dark night, took his revolver and went to investigate. “Who’s there?” he sternly demanded, open the door. No answer. “Who’s there? Answer, or I’ll shoot!” A trembling voice from the farthest corner: “’Deed, sah, dey ain’t nobody hyah ’ceptin’ us chickens.” So, yeah: pretty racist and awful! In a radio show excerpt that I listened to (https://www.waywordradio.org/us-chickens/), the hosts suggest that by the time it had been turned into a hit song in 1946, it had lost all of that context. I think that’s an awfully convenient assertion for two white people to make over a hundred years later!

Rap Genius is the newest example in a long tradition of black music explained for whites, now with a neoliberal twist.