Dead Presidents, 1995
Lil Kim once rapped, “Armored truck heist, hit the bonus like N’Bushe.” But few people rarely understood where she got that from.
The line was referencing N’Bushe Wright’s character, Delilah Benson, from the 1995 film Dead Presidents. A period film, DP imagined the late 60s and 70s and based on the unfortunate circumstances that many African American men faced when they returned from combat after the Vietnam war. Wright shared the screen with Larenz Tate, who played U.S. Marine Anthony Curtis that gets back to the BX from the conflict unceremoniously. He is greeted by the disappointing fact that Uncle Sam saw him and his fellow soldiers as disregarded foster kids: his friend Skip (played by Chris Tucker) addicted to horse, Jose working as a postman, and Cleon (played by Bokeem Woodbine) who was a bloody-thirsty Staff Sergeant now living a “transformed” life as a preacher in Mt. Vernon. They all were struggling, like so many Black and brown soldiers in the country at the time, to get back to normal … but what really was normal they eventually had to ask?
The disrespect that they received as veterans (no money, opportunity, or honor) left them with a vanguard of criminals called the Nat Turner Cadre” willing to take what they believed the government should have… but give them. These former heroes are now bank robbers in the film and living out the line from Nasty Nas’ “The World Is Yours (Pete Rock Remix)” that declared that they were “out for dead presidents to represent” them.