Fuck Tha Police Analysis

In this essay, i will be discussing and describing N.W.A’s - ‘Fuck Tha Police’, serves the needs of that genre’s target market/audience.I will be considering the musical origins; compositional techniques; instrumental arrangements; stylistic elements; sound production value, and any relevant socio -cultural considerations. Finally, i will also be exploring the commercial possibilities for this genre of music in the current music market and touching on Hip-Hop musics history.

In the year of 1988, a song called “Fuck Tha Police” was published and publicly released to the world by the famous rap group N.W.A. on August 9th. The song is an ultimate form of protest. Not only did it reveal racism and police brutality towards African Americans, but it was a real eye opener for the whole world to see how Caucasian people treated people of color back then. The song transcended into a slogan and is now a movement in pop culture all over the world today, you see it on posters, billboards, and even t-shirts. The song hits all three categories of ethos, logos, and pathos. It demonstrates credibility/trust, logic/reason/proof, and emotions/values.

In “Trapped” by Tupac he said ‘ If one more cop harasses me I just might go psycho, and when I gettem I’ll hittem with the bum rush.” Also in “I Fought the Law” by Green Day they said “ Robin’ people with my six gun, I fought the law and the law won.” The song “Gangsta Gangsta’ by N.W.A They said “ I’m the one that you’ll read about takin’ a life or two.” In these songs they admitted for doing a crime in the song they have done. All of these songs come together, because it is talking about how they hate the police or something about a crime. Also in these songs they get aways got away, except for one that tried to fight them. These rappers all mostly grew up in a tough part of their town and had something happened to them with the police. If they didn’t have something wrong with the police they wouldn’t be talking about them in a bad

N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) was a hip-hop group out of Compton known for its controversial yet influential rap lyrics. One of their most popular songs was “Fuck The Police.” This is song was an explicit expression of their feelings toward law enforcement during these unsettled times. Ice Cube rapped, “A young nigga got it bad ‘cause I’m brown.” This simply illustrated the rampant nature of profiling the African American male. Sadly, this hasn’t changed even to the present day. Just a few weeks ago, my twin brother, Malcolm Allen, experienced a racial profiling incident right here in Palo Alto. While waiting for our names to be called outside of a local restaurant, a police drove slowly in front of us. The officer summoned Malcolm and said, “You with the hoodie, come here. You fit the description of a suspect who was carrying a knife.” Numerous young black men from Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown have been brutally killed by law enforcement simply for being black. In other words, they were profiled as threats due to their skin color. This illustrates the idea of history loops itself. Though it has been constant, the intensity of the profiling and police brutality looped from the early 90’s to the present day. As a result, this song was a depiction of the times and a manifestation of what N.W.A wanted to do to the cops. Something this violent and blunt was especially unheard

Picture this, you are teenager growing up in Los Angeles, on your way to school and you turn on the radio. “Yo thanks for tuning into to the hottest radio station in the streets of LA. Up next we got N.W.A. with their new single Appetite for Destruction.” That was common for nearly every person who lived in LA and enjoyed hip-hop music. During the early 90s and late 80s, West coast hip-hop was dominated by the gruesome realities of gangster rap and g-funk. Rap at the time was intense, authentic, and unbearable. Ultimately, this wave of “fuck you” sprouted from the injustices that plagued many impoverished communities. Individuals were angered from the oppressive acts that hindered any attempt to reach success, and gangster music within LA served as the platform to express the frustration under such terrible circumstances. Although the sound was revolutionary and taking over the entire nation, still Los Angeles needed a fresh of breath of air to display the artistic talent that came out of Los Angeles. New York could play with both sides of the hip-hop spectrum of light-heartedness to aggressiveness, but unfortunately for LA, they only had one sound. In New York, they had artists from Kid N Play to Public Enemy. If Los Angeles were ever going to snatch the throne from New York, they needed to do so quickly before the dawn of Golden Age ended.

This video showed the public how the police brutally beat a man that was defenseless. The video spread ramped around the whole news community and a title of the LAPD became known as the most hated cops in America. In LA, there was a problem with racial profiling and police brutality but the blacks were never able to prove the police’s wrong doing. With the video, the blacks felt that this could be an open door to showing the world how the LAPD really acted.

With all this going on, a popular outlet for emotions regarding police brutality was music. A lot of hip hop artists wrote music to release their feelings on this subject. In the 1990s, one famous rap group, N.W.A, wrote a song that really expressed how a lot of African Americans felt at the time and may still feel now. (N.W.A) The song is called “F the Police.” The recent film Straight Out of Compton presents the story of NWA. One scene, in particular, shows how LA police

“A young nigga got it bad ‘cause I'm brown, and not the other color, so police think, they have the authority to kill a minority. F*ck that Sh*t cause I ain’t the one.” (NWA, 1988). Today’s police brutality is ridiculous. Police brutality is the use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians. Every other week a loved black citizen is taken away from us. Over the past decade, police have acted out in ways that have made people wonder if our officers of the law are really doing their job. Unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment have all contributed to the ever-present problem of police brutality in America. Police brutality refers to the

After the disturbing video of King and the 4 police officers was shown to the public by news stations across the country, some were shocked, others were just not surprised at all. The ones who weren't shocked were the minorities living in parts of L.A especially the black community south Los Angeles. According to Bernard Parks, An African-American Los Angeles police officer who was present during the acquittal and the riots stated in an interview , “This particular piece of video validated in thousand of people minds that this has been going on for a long time. It validated that this is how the police treats the community, particularly the black community” (Morris, “LA riots : How 1992 changed the police”) . Not only did the infamous video

"They had a long record of humiliating people, black people, pulling them over and doing what they called 'proning' them on the ground” Karl Fleming (2005). Cops at the time did not care, they found something wrong with the way you look, you got arrested, no questions asked. If you tried to resist arrest, it was going to go bad for you. During the early nineties, there was a rap group coming from Compton, California, N.W.A., that wrote about how hard their life was dealing with all the gang violence and the whole police thing. Some white people did not care for that type of music and when performing, cops tried to arrest the members of N.W.A. because they weren’t allowed to say the things they were rapping about. "So many people who didn't grow up black and poor couldn't understand why it happened. You can live in a different part of L.A. and never understand that frustration. But if you listen to 'F— tha Police,' you hear where they're coming from". John Singleton (1992). Many of the rappers talked about how life rough during those times even before the whole Rodney King incident. On April 29, 1992, felon, Rodney King, was chased by four cops by car because he did not want to pull over while in his

The subject of police brutality and violence was just a topic for music in the past; it is still alive and strong in music today. A rapper named lil boosie wrote a modern version of NWA’s F*ck Tha Police called, F*ck The Police. The song is mostly about the endless threats, humiliations, and violations experienced at the hand of vicious cops. (Clover) In the chorus of the song he raps, “We don’t need you bitches on our street, stay away from me.” He is so against police that he thinks our streets would be safer without police. The rapper doesn’t want the police to help him, that is how much he hates cops. He also states, “Without a badge, you’re just a bitch.”(Clover) He wasn’t holding anything back when writing this song. You can really feel

Classic hip-hop's debatable and political content advocates for societal change. The explicit content which permeated classic hip-hop was something that the music industry hadn't experienced yet. However, many of these rap protest records are not without cause. An anthem of anger for blacks growing up in the streets of Compton and Los Angeles, N.W.A. released a song in which they took part in a fictional trial against the L.A.P.D ("N.W.A."). The song highlights offenses of brutality among police to the minorities living in such areas.

Fuck Tha Police became one of N.W.A's most famous songs, and the film tells the story of how this song originated. We get a historical insight into the Los Angeles Police's view of blacks in the 80's and 90's. Straight Outta Compton is as much a socially critical movie as a biographical film, and this is one of the film's biggest strengths. Songs like Express Yourself, Fuck Tha Police and Straight Outta Compton provoked many, but they also created attention around a new music genre, and the group was a tremendous success.

The movie shows the members being harassed by officers on more than one occasion just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ice Cube wrote a song called “Fuck Da Police” which didn’t make things any better. But NWA weren’t the only rappers to open up about their hatred of the law. Even songs today express the same feelings toward police because the same issues are going on within the black culture. The Rodney King beating was recorded but all four officers were found not guilty, is similar to Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray and many other black males were killed by law enforcement and just like Rodney King their deaths led to

In the movie, Straight Out Of Compton, we see the story of the of musical group NWA, from start, to breakup, to eventual death of their dear friend. Through the film, you see a significant amount of cultural expression and political activism. Most of their songs provide a detailed story of what it’s like in one of the most dangerous cities in the USA. While that alone doesn’t count as political activism, the singing of their songs, their sheer deference to political and social norms, and even their response to political threat best shows their political activism. The moment that best exemplified this was both the disregard of the FBI’s warning and the Chicago police’s warning not to sing F*** The Police, a song about the racially discriminatory,