Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 65

_Ra£_MusicResisHngJR^^ 61 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