The New Revolution of Rap and the Law

Matt Altstiel
11/20/06
GLOS 3900

The New Revolution of Rap and the Law

Hip Hop, a musical style born out of urban frustration and political alienation has served as a voice for the disenfranchised and urban poor. As such, rap music has always had an uneasy relationship with American authority, be it on the local, state and federal level. One consistent target for rap artists over the years has been the police, often perceived as an extension and tool of white oppression toward minority groups. The lyrics contained within the songs “Fuck the Police” by N.W.A and “Cop Killer” by the Ice T led heavy metal group Body Count, represent but two strident examples militantly attacking established police practices of racial profiling. While one sided, each song serves as a dialogue, a protest against established conditions framed within the reality of urban American life. The songs’ production and their subsequent reactions serve as enduring discussion points into the issues of racial politics, censorship and police brutality.

N.W.A’s “Fuck the Police” begins firmly within the confines of the established legal authority positing the group’s rappers as the judge and the prosecution, indicting the police through often inflammatory language. Marking a break from studied, thought provoking lyrics by such rappers as LL Cool J and KRS-One, N.W.A advocates violent street vigilantism towards police officers as a means to destruct police strategies which demoralize and create fear within the African American community. Rapper Easy – E affirms this militant view exclaiming, “Without a gun and a badge, what do you got?
A sucker in a uniform waiting to get shot, by me, or another nigga, and with a gat, it don't matter if he's smarter or bigger.”[1] Such statements, and the way they are delivered appeal to the emotional side straying away from reason. Ultimately, the emotionally frustrated lyrics echo a complete loss of faith in the Police to change internally and through normal legal means. The song ends with a rousing condemnation delivered as a sentence by “Judge” Dr. Dre in the following words: “The jury has found you guilty of bein a redneck, whitebread, chickenshit muthafucka.”[2] Dre’s sentence locates the police as a white apparatus intentionally designed to destroy urban communities.

The politics of Reaganomics and existing policing practices effectively countered the perceived threat of militant Black Nationalism and unity with increasingly severe punishment tactics. By 1988 (and still consistent today), the year of the song’s release, the incarceration rate of African American males proportional to their white counterparts was nearly 3:1.[3] At the same time, the average income for African American families had declined relative to inflation, leading to higher rates of poverty. Chang explains, “In 1983, the median white family owned eleven times the amount of wealth as a median family of color. By 1989, the gap had nearly doubled.”[4] These very real facts of urban life led to explosive confrontations between legal authorities and the populations they oppressed. The glamour of the outlaw, as an individual outside legal authority and prescribed social norms, helps outline the transition into Gangsta rap and explain its enduring social popularity. Rose offers, “hidden transcripts that attempt to undermine this power block do so by insinuating a critique of the powerful in stories that revolve around symbolic and legitimated victories over powerholders,”[5] (Rose 100). The testimonies offered by N.W.A and other Gangsta rappers give power and a sense of victory to its listeners who so desperately want to taste it.

Against this background, the hard charging lyrics condoning violence against police officers as an appropriate means of resistance, drew the ire of the legal establishment. Going far beyond the local authority N.W.A seemed to target, the FBI and Secret Service independently sent letters to the group’s record label Ruthless Records, to voice their displeasure at the song’s lyrical content. Legal authorities in Detroit arrested the group members during a live performance and police officers in the state of California refused to offer protection during live performances, ruling out the possibility for the group go on tour.[6] Whether intended or not, the song’s lyrics provided enough of a tangible threat to police officers and their families to warrant censorship efforts.

Ironically, the official protest of a protest song fed directly to the success of the group’s debut album, ensuring a wider audience to its lyrical content. Such a proactive reaction displayed by legal authority effectively reinforced the anger and frustration shared by the group’s rappers. However, the racial tensions and inequalities outlined within the song “Fuck the Police” were further exacerbated. The police, due to the violent behavior the lyrical content advocates, became even more wary of African Americans. Rather than seeking to address the problems rap music diagnosed, the legal establishment suppressed its articulation, preventing the viability of social change.[7] Put another way, “the relationship between listening to and committing subsequent acts of violence appears to more closely resemble a statistical accident than a causal equation.”[8] The unwillingness or inability of legal authority to understand the reality of urban African American life further entrenched the politics of racism. The dialogue between legal authority and Hip Hop as represented by the reaction the song provoked, highlights the function and need for Hip Hop as a means of interaction and communication with direct political authority.

“Cop Killer” by the heavy metal group Body count reflects similar lyrical content urging violent reaction as a method to counter police aggression. Furthering the trend of censorship and legal condemnation, the song suffered erasure from the album and the eventual dismissal of both Ice T and Body Count from their music label. Ice T channels “Fuck the Police” through such lyrics as: “I got my twelve gauge sawed off. I got my headlights turned off. I'm 'bout to bust some shots off. I'm 'bout to dust some cops off.”[9] The anger and hatred towards the police is tangible, collective and widespread. These feelings are significantly emphasized through multiple voices shouting the chorus, “Cop killer, I know your family's grievin' (fuck em). Cop killer, but tonight we get even.”[10] Such treatment of lyrical content focuses dislocated rage onto a principle manifestation of white social, political and economic order: the police officer.

First performed in 1991 and recorded shortly the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict and L.A. Riots of 1992, the song’s timing made it a lightning rod for social criticism.[11] The song’s lyrics continued a trend towards a “self-serving moral panic around rap music.”[12] In other words, rap music was seen as a socially dangerous and undesirable construct of American popular culture. While outright censorship never occurred, indirect economic censorship reinforced the cultural parameters that white systems of power sought to control. Rose comments that “dominant groups must prevail in a war of position to control the discursive and ideological terrain that legitimates such institutional control,”[13] The urgent condemnation of rap generated by benefactors of contemporary social arrangements allowed personal offense to become a measure of political superiority. Likewise, mass media seemed to have the implicit consent necessary to violate notions of creative license as well as artistic freedom of expression.

The aggressive backlash directed towards N.W.A and Body Count finds its roots within the racism and brutality of perceived white cultural superiority. Hamm and Ferrell point to examples such as Eric Clapton’s rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff”, numerous Great Depression era songs, as well as modern rock songs; all of which glorify anti-social behavior.[14] However, as the authors explain, “Clapton's white bread portrayal of an armed and heroic Jamaican 'rude boy' was abstract and romantic. Ice-T's shotgun -toting black U.S. gangster is too concrete, stripped of romantic pretense and lodged uncomfortably in everyday life.”[15] While both songs center on the same subject, one listening to Clapton presumably can easily disassociate lyrical characterization with the artist. Stripped of association, white artists and white musical productions are not required to exhibit the same lyrical responsibility of the rap artist. In the case of the rap artist, the listener more closely associates artist and lyrics, combining the two into a single, unitary construction. As a result, rap lyrics are not given the same leeway as Rock and Roll lyrics, allowing them the equal advantage and disadvantage as a thoroughly subversive text.

Social criticism, a key thematic element of rap takes on a definite form within “Fuck the Police and “Cop Killer”. A daily reminder of oppression and disenfranchisement, local police exercise the unique duality of enforcement and autonomy not available to the average citizen. Thus it is no coincidence that such lyrics harshly castigate an apparatus that has “collapsed categories of youths, class and race into one profile that portrays young black males as criminals.”[16] Clearly framed within this context, the militant, battle minded lyrics evoke the imagery of war against an ideological other. Inverting authority and moral supremacy challenges established social order, which is understood differently by each side of the ideological divide.

Through the discourse between rap lyrics and legal authority, attention is directed towards the creators and “perpetrators” of rap music. While more proactive and militant than many contemporary social-political statements of the time, N.W.A’s “Fuck the Police” and Body Count’s “Cop Killer”, are indicative of the general attitude of young African Americans directed at legal establishment. However, the unprecedented response and level of persecution focused on these artists has served as an enduring reminder of racial politics, censorship and brutality present in everyday American urban life. The message of these songs will continue to resurface as long as the dislocation between the lived experience of African American youth and the falsified views of the American legal apparatus remains.

Bibliography
Bureau of Justice Statistics Jail Populations by Race Chart. 2 June. 2006. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 19 Nov. 2006. <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/jailrace.htm>
Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: Picador Press, 2005.
Cop Killer (Song). 10 Nov. 2006. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 19 Nov. 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Killer_(song)>
Ferrell, Jeff and Hamm, Mark S. “Raps, Cops and Crime: Clarifying the ‘Cop Killer” Controversy.” Rapping about Cop Killing. 2004. Institute for Jewish Policy Research. 20 Nov. 2006. <http://www.axt.org.uk/HateMusic/Rappin.htm>
Fuck the Police Lyrics. 2006. Lyrics Depot. 20 Nov. 2006. <http://www.lyricsdepot.com/n-w-a/fuck-tha-police.html>
Ice – T, “Cop Killer”. Date Unknown. 19 Nov. 2006. <http://it.uwp.edu/gangsters/ice-t.cop.killer.html>
Martin, Dennis R. “The Music of Murder”. 2004. Institute for Jewish Policy Research. 20 Nov. 2006. http://www.axt.org.uk/HateMusic/Rappin.htm>
Riviere, Melisa. The New Revolution of Rap. Anthropology of Hip Hop in a Global Perspective. Blegan Hall, University of Minnesota: Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN. 19 Oct. 2006.
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.
[1] http://www.lyricsdepot.com/n-w-a/fuck-tha-police.html
[2] http://www.lyricsdepot.com/n-w-a/fuck-tha-police.html
[3] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/jailrace.htm
[4] Chang pg. 221
[5] Rose pg. 100
[6] Riviere, Melisa 19 Oct. 2006
[7] Hamm and Farrell “Raps, Cops and Crime”
[8] Hamm and Farrell “Raps, Cops and Crime”
[9] http://it.uwp.edu/gangsters/ice-t.cop.killer.html
[10] http://it.uwp.edu/gangsters/ice-t.cop.killer.html
[11] Riviere, Melisa 19 Oct. 2006.
[12] Martin, “The Music of Murder”
[13] Rose pg. 102
[14] Hamm and Farrell “Raps, Cops and Crime”
[15] Hamm and Farrell “Raps, Cops and Crime”

[16] Rose pg. 106