Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 65
_Ra£_MusicResisHngJR^^
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continue to face conditions of extraordinary hardship. It opposes the
view that the conditions of African-Americans are no different from
any other group.^^
I will first address the latter of these two elements. Today racist
oppression is frequently manifest in police harassment, so in rap one
expression of the "economics of slavery" comes in the detailing of
police harassment and brutality.^ ^ Negotiating these conditions
comes in part through expressing anti-police sentiment—in the
attempt to associate police not with "serving and protecting" citizens
but harming them. TTie most notorious example of this is NWA’s song
"F— Tha Police." In this song, NWA powerfully articulates how
white officers devalue the lives of non-white males: "A young nigger
got it bad 'cause I’m brown/ And not the other color so police think/
They have the authority to kill a minority." This experience of
devaluation is confirmed in interviews conducted with anonymous
white officers soon after the Rodney King incident (Cooper). In this
song, NWA also expressed the war-like conditions in L.A from the
perspective of blacks living in Southcentral. From this perspective,
the Rodney King incident, which has forced the world to take notice
of L.A.'s battle zones, was a common attack answered by "F— Tha
Police"'s violent lyrics: "Beat a police out of shape/ And when I'm
done bring the yellow tape/ To tape off the scene of the slaughter/
Still in a swamp of blood and water." Condemnations of this song,
like condenrmations of the April 1992 rebellion in L.A., fail to see that
appeals to "law and order" make no sense where city-wide apartheid
exists.^^
The Rodney King incident is again presaged in rap by the common
description of blacks being pulled over and harassed by officers.
These songs help make clear why Rodney King, a black motorist,
would rather attempt to run from the police than risk being pulled
over.^^ In particular, blacks who do not drive old and dam ag^ cars
are often assumed to be drug dealers. LL Cool )'s song "Illegal Search"
discusses this directly:
What the hell are you looking for?
Can't a young man make money any more?
Or is it my job to make sure I'm poor?
Can’t my car look better than yours?
Keep a cigar in between my doors