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Maxine Waters' Words Get Covered, Remixed And Transformed Into A Gospel Jam

When the U.S. Congress is involved, it needn't take long for a bit of seemingly mundane procedural language to go viral. Last Thursday, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) was attempting to grill Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about an unanswered inquiry; when Mnuchin began filling time by complimenting the congresswoman, she interrupted, encouraged him to answer her questions directly, and testily and repeatedly interjected with an instant meme: "Reclaiming my time."

"Reclaiming my time" can now be applied to virtually any time-wasting and/or exasperating situation, and as of Sunday, its evolution as a meme includes a gospel remix by actor and singer Mykal Kilgore. Looping his voice to create a virtual choir, Kilgore turns Waters' words into a soaring 90-second jam.

"Our beloved 'Auntie' Maxine Waters laid this sermon down so good that I had to sing about it," Kilgore writes in the song's YouTube description. "Whenever anybody tries to distract me or block me (even with praise or platitudes) I'm gonna have to let them know that I'm #ReclaimingMyTime!!!!!!!"

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)