Nancy Grace vs. 2 Chainz: a highlight reel of their epic duel

By Fusion Staff  |  January 14, 2015 | 3:06pm
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If Nancy Grace has a secret plan to woo millennials, it’s working. Or, at least it worked last night.

That’s when Twitter and Vine basically died thanks to a brilliantly booked episode about the dangers of big, bad weed. Grace’s thesis for the episode “#Pot2Blame”: Marijuana is still ruining the kids, with society just teetering on the brink of a new “Go Ask Alice.” And also let’s blame rappers, kind of.

Nancy’s no stranger to incredible hashtags, of course—who could forget #BabyInTrash or #MurderforPizza! But as much as it was fun to tweet last night’s episode title– “I just spoke to Domino’s pizza-ordering app for too long, #pot2blame” – her guest booking was even more A+. Behold, the man with whom Grace decided to go toe to toe:

Yes, that’s 2 Chainz, f.k.a. Tity Boi, a.k.a. the man of simple desires, who wants to be left alone with a fat butt and luxury goods instead of arguing with a crazy lady on TV. Yet he held his own during a shrill 11-ish minutes which featured a strange conflation between instances of weed-involved child abuse and lyrics that don’t even mention weed.

There were also all kinds of incorrect, weirdo accusations lobbed, like when Grace insisted, “If this is legalized, then everybody is gonna have unlimited access to pot!” And basically any time 2 Chainz starts to obviously speak sense, Grace had her producers go back to a story of a time a Bad Thing Happened to a Child Because a Parent Was Using Pot.

Here are the top highlights of the whole thing, which you can also watch in full at the end of this post.

2 Chainz’ cardigan/sunglasses combo

Borrowing some stylistic panache from your sassy nana, he rocked some pretty incredible tinted glasses indoors and sensible, vaguely Southwestern earth tones.

Nancy’s introduction in which she sure put a lot of emphasis on the phrase “Tity Boi”

Grace’s awkward pot pun/metaphor/whatever is going on here

So, the set-up to the whole segment, before 2 Chainz’ interview, is that Nancy is giving examples of Very Bad Things that happened to young people and #teens because of pot. The rapper helpfully points out to her that in all the incidents she’s mentioned where Bad Things happened, alcohol was also involved, so maybe she shouldn’t extrapolate about all marijuana users from there.

Grace freaks out and gets all defensive, because she would never, ever make assumptions about a group of people. (Never mind the fact that she’s getting a major rapper to basically speak for all weed supporters.) Behold, a confusing exchange—what are they even mad about right now?—and a great and awkward metaphor involving the word “pot.”

This part in which Grace goes off the rails a few minutes in, forgets about pot, and asks him to explain his name, and we finally get an on-the-record explanation for “Tity Boi”

What is this, the “harass Two Chainz show” or an episode ostensibly about the dangers of marijuana legalization? Anyways, here’s why he formerly went by “Tity Boi”—nope, it’s not a clever allusion or anything, it’s actually because of breasts.

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When 2 Chainz gently informs Grace that yes, people already can get weed, legal or not

This comes after her hand-wringing over “unlimited access to pot!” Bringing some more sanity to the proceedings, 2 Chainz rightfully points out that marijuana being illegal pretty much only serves to fuel the prison-industrial complex. He also points out that legalizing weed could juice the economy and help pull us out of a deficit. Even Grace has to finally admit that his fiscal opinions make at least a kernel of sense.

Watch the segment below…. And if you’d like a more reasonable media interview with a weed-celebrating rapper, check out Fusion’s interview with Wiz Khalifa here.

Arielle Castillo is Fusion’s culture editor, reporting on arts, music, culture, and subcultures from the streets on up. She’s also a connoisseur of weird Florida, weightlifting, and cats.

 
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