The thing about “N***** in Paris” is that, more so than, like, “Made in America,” or even “No Church in the Wild,” it’s Watch the Throne’s real moral center. When Jay says “If you escaped what I’ve escaped, you’d be in Paris getting fucked up too,” he’s not just asserting an earned right to blast Young Jeezy while getting drunk inside nice French hotels — he’s also putting the titanic mission-accomplished Louis XIV blowhardery of the rest of the album in perspective. It’s the one moment where he and Kanye admit that the universe has granted them a degree of freedom and comfort that in the context of their own lives and the context of general human life on the planet is absolutely absurd. That to some extent they’ve stepped off the wheel of suffering and they know they’re incredibly fortunate. But there’s a reason the song is called “N***** in Paris” and not “Super-Fortunate Dudes in Paris,” y’know? Because racism! They’re saying “n*****” because they know it still contains the actual N-word, and throws it like a shadow across the song; the fact that they have beaten odds that existed before they were born is what the song is about. Katy Perry has escaped nothing except the prison of marriage to the guy from the shitty Arthur remake, and I guess maybe that’s what Katy Perry is trying to tell us here: Being married to Russell Brand was as bad as being married to the legacy of centuries of racism.