“Any other racists want to try us again?” Princess Nokia said in a string of tweets yesterday. Her words came a few days after a viral video of a man screaming the n-word on a Brooklyn-bound L train circulated online. On Twitter, Nokia said she is one of the citizens who helped end the altercation with the man, identified by The New York Post as “Lime-A-Rita guzzling Paul Lawson.”
Confirming her status as a hometown hero, Nokia says she slapped Lawson when he called a group of teenage boys “n******,” invoking the solidarity of her fellow passengers, who eventually managed to push Lawson off the train at a stop. The video shows a woman in a gauzy orange dress and maroon high tops — Nokia’s been favoring the flowy look at her powerful live sets — launching a to-go container of what may be creamy butternut soup at the man’s face before he makes a last, unsuccessful attempt to wedge himself in the doorway.
In case anyone cares, the self-identified “NYU legal scholar” Lawson later took to Facebook to invoke the “first ammendment” [sic] and refer to himself as a “peaceful protester,” as Gothamist reports. The Internet has confirmed that this is not the first time Lawson has played drunk lawyer. In May, footage surfaced showing a man socking Lawson in the face, deftly removing him from the train to applause after Lawson spent 20 minutes spouting racial and homophobic epithets.
