Jessie Witte

Essay #2:  The New Revolution of Rap and the Law

 

 

The Law:  Love to Hate It

“…Gangsta rap (an often cartoonish portrayal of black masculinity,

ghetto realism and gangster sensibilities)

became one of the most popular genres of hip-hop” (Neal, 376).

 

            By the end of the 80s there was a shift in the production of hip hop music.  A new genre was appearing on the scene and it was called gangsta rap.  This new kind of music came from the Los Angeles area, usually Compton and Watts, which were two cities “paralyzed by the postindustrial economic redistribution” that “narrates experiences and fantasies specific to life as a poor young, black, male subject in Los Angeles” (Rose, 59).  Ice-T was one of the main people to define what is called gangsta rap.  “Ice-T put the Los Angeles gangsta rap style on the national map, which encouraged the emergence of NWA…..and others” (Rose, 4).  The more controversial songs these two artists/groups made were “F**k Tha Police” by NWA and “Cop Killer” by Ice-T.  NWA’s song was released earlier than that of Ice-T, three years earlier.  However, both of these songs are prime examples of the “dangers” of gangsta rap and the controversy that followed these and other gangsta rap songs/artists.  These two songs show the conflict of young black males and legal authority which represents the underlying fear of African-Americans that sprout from a long history.  In order to fully analyze these songs one has to look at the discourse that hip-hop has created and how gangsta rap has furthered this.  It is also important to take a look at how this new style was commodified and undermined.  Last but not least it is important to review the fear of rap and how censorship was taken too far. 

              NWA came out with their song “F**k Tha Police” in 1988.  They constantly rap about racial profiling, including lyrics such as:  “searchin my car, lookin for the product, thinking every nigga is sellin narcotics” and “young nigga got it bad cuz I’m brown and not the other color so police think they have the authority to kill a minority.”  These lyrics depict the struggle these young men are facing in their neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.  They also rap about the struggle of “keeping the black man down” by saying “you’d rather see me in the pen then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo.”  It doesn’t matter if a young black male is making a life for himself and not struggling in poverty, it can make him look even more suspicious.  They depict police brutality and unfair justice by rapping “they’re scared of a nigga so they mace me to blind me.”  They both value and devalue the institution of law.  They rap “reading my rights and shit, it’s all junk” but at the same time the whole premise of this song is set up in a courtroom in which the police is found guilty “of bein a redneck, whitebread, chickenshit muthafucka.”  They are waving “a defiant middle finger in the face of racist and oppressive social institutions” (Watts, 597).  Ice Cube explains later that the song had to be narrowed down to the police because the police are the government in the ghetto (Watts, 597).  Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” was being played in 1991 but the first recorded version wasn’t released till 1992.  This song blatantly addresses police brutality; “I’m a Cop killer, f**k police brutality!”    It also deals with racial profiling just as NWA’s song and just like most of the gangsta rap style songs.  It is also a shout out and tribute to what killing police stands for; like his dead homies, freedom, having courage and Rodney King. 

            The postindustrial life that gangsta rap emerged from in the Los Angeles era that bred these two groups/artists is “a distinct discourse of African-American youth, with obvious regional variations, emerged to narrate, critique, challenge, and deconstruct the realities” in which they grew up (Neal, 370).  “Hip-hop music and culture represented such a discourse” (Ibid).  These were not just songs but a culture and a discourse for black youth, usually males.  These males in the beginning, the 70s, were using this “discourse across a fractured and dislocated national community” (Neal, 371).  This is what added so much strength to hip-hop and it not just being a fad.  In the beginning this discourse was used in a way “to counter the iconography of fear, menace and spectacle that dominated” the media’s portrayal of black life (Neal, 372).  Hip-hop also served “as a conduit for political discourse” (Neal, 374).  Though gangsta rap doesn’t follow the earlier footsteps of hip-hop, in that it doesn’t counter these images of black people to be feared or seen as a menace, they still used “black rage as a political discourse” that proved attractive to youths (Ibid).  Chuck D of another gangsta rap group, Public Enemy, sees “hip-hop as an alternative medium for black youth….to access political and social reality” (Neal, 375).  This sort of background into hip-hop sheds a light on the two songs this paper focuses on.  Those two songs are definitely funneling black rage at the institution of law in this country as the focus of their political discourse.   

            Though these two songs have a background of strong discourse and they themselves display a strong political discourse against law enforcement, they still fail in other areas, such as internal issues of the black community.  “The fact that groups…..were unable to critique the sexism inherent to much of the black political thought in the 1960s is particularly disheartening” (Neal, 376).  However, gangsta rap was known for hyping up black masculinity and the gangster sensibilities.  Along with gangsta rap came notoriety of the artists which was “a stimulus for its own commercialization” (Neal, 379).  This notoriety boomed because of the music and videos, this new sub-genre was “embraced by many young whites as a mode of social resistance” (Ibid).  Spike Lee took this idea and realized the potential and “commercial value of ghetto narratives” which has made him a very successful man in the entertainment industry (Neal, 385).  “Ultimately, political hip-hop was undermined by hip-hop’s own internal logic that often privileged constant stylistic innovation” (Neal, 376).  This innovation led to gangsta rap which then got challenged by mainstream culture in a way that led to control over or the “policing” of hip-hop (Neal, 377).    

            The extensive popularity of hip-hop and gangsta rap especially, led to the policing and a need to control or censor it.  This same concept of fear can be seen in the history of this country.  This fear goes to historically rooted concerns “about the congregation of African-Americans in public spaces” (Neal, 378).  Let’s face it, most of the government positions and law enforcement are going to be white and historically this fear comes from these racial tensions and fears.  This fear and concern escalated after World War II when black youth “began to assert themselves socially, culturally, and politically and in the process publicly question various forms of social authority that countered their own desires” (Neal, 378).  “Fear mongers project onto black men precisely what slavery, poverty, educational deprivation and discrimination have ensured that they do not have –– great power and influence” (Glassner, 17).  This is exactly what NWA confronts in their song, as I discussed earlier, of “keeping the black man down.”  Media images portray young black males as poverty stricken and uneducated or even that “every young American male is a potential mass murderer” (Ibid).  Then when black males are seen in a light that isn’t poverty stricken, as successful it is seen as suspicious.  These stereotypes

 

“construct young African Americans as a dangerous internal element in urban American; an element that, if allowed to roam freely will threaten the social order; an element that must be policed.  Since rap music is understood as the predominant symbolic voice of black urban males, it heightens this sense of threat and reinforces dominant white middle-class objections to urban black youths who do not aspire to (but are haunted by) white middle-class standards” (Rose, 126). 

The policing began and NWA was one of the first to be suspected with their song released in 1988.  The FBI even got involved, taking a stand against the songs lyrics and even the group itself.  This “reflected an increasingly common trend to criminalize hip-hop artist, their audiences, and the music itself” (Neal, 378). 

But it all went a little too far, because by the late 1990s, the power of rap was being taken for granted, “people could blame rappers for almost any violent or misogynistic act anywhere” (Glassner, 17).  The gangsta rappers became so dangerous that they could easily be thrown in jail for their lyrics.  After NWA released their song they received the FBI letter denouncing their lyrics and later met so much resistance while touring because police refused to run security for them.  When these police refused to run security, insurance companies refused to cover the venues for NWA’s performances, therefore promoters couldn’t afford them or the risk.  Due to this resistance because of the censorship of one song, in affect all their songs were being censored.  When Ice-T released “Cop Killer” the protests and threats began.  The International Brotherhood of Police Officers (IBPO) “claimed that the song advocated the killing of government officers and therefore violated federal law” and they stated their intent on charging their record company, Time Warner if any officer died where this record was sold (Kahan, 2597).  Ice-T withdrew the song from his album, something that NWA never did, but still met with resistance from law enforcement just like NWA.  Despite his actions, Time Warner a year later dropped him as an artist.  These actions against rappers lead these big time companies and even the state of Texas “not to invest in companies that produce gangsta albums” (Glassner, 17).  But because the police took it so far and refused to be security for NWA because of just one song it can be argued that this one song lacks “First Amendment protection, the face remains the, without secure, willing venues, N.W.A. cannot perform any of its material, the vast bulk of which raises no constitutional issues” (Kahan, 2603).  You can see from the reactions to just these two songs that rap is “politically vulnerable” and thus “requires protection as political speech in order to thrive” (Kahan, 2588).  It is important to keep in mind that “rap has been attacked by public officials and a stream of real and threatened litigation, although no one has established that the music has caused injury” (Ibid). 

The emergence of gangsta rap in the late 1980s came from a very specific place, Compton and Watts.  These cities were struggling with the postindustrial economic redistribution and this fueled the emergence of a new sub-genre of life as a poor young, black male in those cities.  Ice-T was practically the father of gangsta rap but his most controversial song, “Cop Killer,” wasn’t released till 1991 but it received threats, police resistance to his performances and ultimately being dropped from Time Warner.  NWA released “F**k Tha Police” three years earlier and received a letter from the FBI that set off a chain of police to resist them at their concerts, and ultimately ended their tour.  These two songs, though controversial, represent the conflict of young black males and the institution of law in all forms.  However, this overall conflict is usually deduced down to the law enforcement level because that is what they deal with on a day to day basis.  These songs address racial profiling, the fear of congregating African-Americans, police brutality, unfair justice and the denying and acceptance of the institution itself.  These songs are a voice and though it is said that NWA may have lacked “a cohesive ideology” they still did an “accessible critique of poverty, economic exploitation, and police brutality” (Neal, 376).  These songs need and should be protected because they are representing a voice and that voice deserves to be heard.   

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

Glassner, Barry.  2003.  “Rap Music and the Culture of Fear.”  Entertainment and Sports            Lawyer.  Spring issue.  Vol. 21, n. 1.

 

Kahan, Jeffrey, B.  “Bach, Beethoven and The (Home) Boys:  Censoring Violent Rap

Music in America.”  On Southern California Law Review, University of Southern            California, Sept. 1993.

 

Neal, Mark Anthony.  2004.  “Post-Industrial Soul:  Black Music at the Crossroads.”  In            That’s the Joint:  The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.  Forman, Murray and Neal, Mark            Anthony [ed.].  Routledge:  New York.

 

Rose, Tricia.  1999.  Black Noise:  Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary            America.  Connecticut:  Wesleyan University. 

 

Watts, Eric K.  2004.  “An Exploration of Spectacular Consumption:  Gangsta Rap as            Cultural Commodity.”  In That’s the Joint:  The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.            Forman, Murray and Neal, Mark Anthony [ed.].  Routledge:  New York.