N.W.A - Fuck Tha Police - _VERIFIED_
"Fuck tha Police" is a protest song by American hip hop group N.W.A that appears on the 1988 album Straight Outta Compton as well as on the N.W.A's Greatest Hits compilation. The lyrics protest police brutality and racial profiling and the song was ranked number 425 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[2] In 2021, Rolling Stone re-ranked the song at number 190 in an updated list.[3]
N.W.A - Fuck Tha Police -
"Fuck tha Police" parodies court proceedings, inverting them by presenting Dr. Dre as a judge hearing a prosecution of the police department. Three members of the group, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E, take the stand to "testify" before the judge as prosecutors. Through the lyrics, the rappers criticize the local police force. Two interludes present re-enactments of stereotypical racial profiling and police brutality.
At the end, the jury finds the police department guilty of being a "redneck, white-bread, chicken-shit motherfucker."[6] A police officer, who is revealed to be the defendant, contests that the arguments presented were all lies and starts to demand justice as Dr. Dre orders him out of the courtroom, prompting the police officer to yell obscenities as he is led out.
On 10 April 2011, New Zealand musician Tiki Taane was arrested on charges of "disorderly behaviour likely to cause violence to start or continue" after performing the song at a gig in a club in Tauranga during an inspection of the club by the police.[16][17] On 13 April, Tiki told Marcus Lush on Radio Live that the lyrics often feature in his performances and his arrest came as a complete surprise.[18]
The lyrics for the song talk about police violence and police brutality, along with racial profiling. These are felt all too often in Black neighborhoods and have been for decades. In fact, some police reformists, including the NAACP, allege that the police department itself was created as a means to find and punish runaway slaves.
The song parodies the courts by presenting N.W.A. producer and DJ, Dr. Dre, as a judge who is hearing various trials prosecuting the police department. The rappers in N.W.A., from Ice Cube to MC Ren and Eazy-E, each take the stand to testify before Judge Dre. Each rapper criticizes the police.
Afterward, Gregory returned to the hotel. He handed N.W.A.'s production manager a briefcase full of cash from the show as well as all the plane tickets back to LA. He called the bus driver to check on the two cases full of guns the group carried on the road. They tried to drive the buses into Canada, "just in case something happened," but police arrived shortly after that.
Prior to the verdict, the deputy said that he took issue with the vulgarity of the word "fuck" in the song. However, Nicholas Somberg, a lawyer who represented Webb pro bono, said that a video from the initial traffic stop showed the officer using the same word with Franklin. Because of this and the circumstances leading to the ticket, Webb believed that this was a free speech issue.
Between 1984 and 1989, there was a 33% spike in citizen complaints of police brutality, complaints that went largely ignored by the LAPD. Between 1986 and 1990, 1,400 officers were investigated for using excessive force, but less than 1 percent were prosecuted. Operation Hammer saw the arrest of over 50,000 people by 1990, with more young black people being arrested by the LAPD than at any time since the Watts riots, which took place 50 years ago this week.
An informal police network faxes messages to police stations nationwide, urging cops to help cancel concerts by N.W.A., a group based in Compton, California. Since late spring, their shows have been jeopardized or aborted in Detroit (where the group was briefly detained by the cops), Washington, D.C., Chattanooga, Milwaukee, and Tyler, Texas. N.W.A. played Cincinnati only after Bengal linebacker and City Councilman Reggie Williams and several of his teammates spoke up for them.
Police pressure forced the cancellation of a June 17, 1987 Run-D.M.C./Beastie Boys show at the Seattle Center Coliseum, beginning a new cycle of such abuses that trace back to the heyday of Alan Freed. Last May, Ouachita County, Arkansas, sheriff Jack Dews seized rap and heavy metal tapes from a Wal-Mart from the Heart of the Blues record store in Camden, claiming the music was obscene under state law and couldn't legally be sold to anyone under 17. In August, the 203,000-member Fraternal Order of Police declared a boycott of any musical group that advocates assaults on police officers, a significant stand since off-duty cops staff most concert security teams.
Sometimes a song can come on the radio and it feels like a person or presence is talking to you. That's a feeling law enforcement in Otago, New Zealand are tired of after N.W.A.'s "Fuck tha Police" was repeatedly and illegally broadcast over police scanners this weekend.
Officers have been forced to listen to the original 1988 anti-police brutality classic as well as a cover version by Rage Against The Machine. It's a more musical protest than the one Otago police faced in August, when "pig grunts and abuse" could be heard on their radios.
The Black Lives Matter protests standing against systemic racism and police brutality, which have gained traction since the murder of George Floyd on May 25, has seen a concurrent spike in the the streams of anti-police anthems.
[The DOC]Right about now, N.W.A court is in full effect, Judge Dre presiding!In the case of N.W.A versus the police department, the prosecuting attorneys are: MC Ren, Ice Cube, and Eazy Motherfuckin' E!
[Ice Cube]Fuck the police!Comin' straight from the undergroundA young nigga got it bad 'cause I'm brownAnd not the other color some police thinkThey have the authority to kill a minority
And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get noneBut don't let it be a black and a white one'Cause they'll slam ya down to the street topBlack police showin' out for the white cop
[MC Ren]Fuck the police!And Ren said it with authorityBecause the niggas on the street is a majorityA gang, that's wit' whoever I'm steppin'And the motherfuckin' weapon is kept in
[Several]Get down and put your hands up where I can see 'em!Move, motherfucker! Move! NOW!What the fuck did I do? Man, what did I do?Just shut the fuck up and get yo' motherfuckin' ass on the floor!But I didn't do shit.Man, just shut the fuck up!You've heard it! Man, just shut the fuck up!
The song, "Fuck Tha Police" by 1990s Los Angeles group N.W.A., was illegally played several times through the official Dunedin police frequency on Monday and over the weekend, according to local newspapers.
The region's acting commander Inspector Kelvin Lloyd told local media that there were no police radios missing so police believed that the broadcasts were being made by an outside party who had not yet been found.
Similar hacking reports emerged last August in the country, after a member of the public broadcast pig grunts and verbal abuse through a lower North Island police radio frequency. The word pig is commonly used to insult law enforcement officials.
Emerging from the de-industrialised urban environment of 1980s South Los Angeles, significantly impacted by the slow death of its middle-class and Reagan-era social policies, members of NWA have always maintained that a form of street reporting defined their lyrical style. Fuck tha Police is essentially a protest against police harassment.
Of course the post-Rodney King trial conflagration of 1992 imbued NWA with a retrospectively-applied prophetic veneer. This has in turn been amplified by recent unrest in contemporary Ferguson and the steady drip-feed of video footage capturing the tragic results of failed police practices across America, a full quarter of a century since the release of Straight Outta Compton.
The emcees take turns indicting the police for their unacceptable harassment, at the same time indicting themselves as murderously-inclined wannabe cop-killers - a contradiction that reflects the rich seam of ambivalence and ambiguity running through hip-hop.
In the end, the policeman is not even deemed worthy of a violent end, and is merely laughed out of court. The mocking tone of this pseudo-conviction was possibly just as genuine an irritant to the collective law and order psyche than the hyperbolic intimations of physical violence.
After each of these chorus-like sections there is a scene, the first two of which depict the emcees bearing the brunt of vicious police harassment on the street, the events that landed the LAPD in the dock in the first place.
Since it was released in 1988, the "Fuck the Police" slogan is continuing to influence pop culture in the form of songs, T-shirts and artwork. The lyrics protest police brutality and racial profiling. There have been several cover versions of the song from Rage Against the Machine and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.[2] 041b061a72