Gangster Rap Book Report

had gained all throughout Los Angeles, California. During the 70’s-90’s, racism was still at huge. Nobody knew what was going on behind closed doors because we did not have social media back then. High tech phones/cameras and technology that advanced were not accessible at the time to actually view the rawness of what was going on in the field. Ethos is demonstrated by N.W.A. by their status. By status I mean that N.W.A. was a famous and well known rap group which featured only African Americans (Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, MC Ren, DJ Yella). The five were originally big known rappers/producers prior to them coming together to form the group. So people already knew about them from a musical/hip-hop perspective and throughout the Los Angeles community, which is where they all resided from. N.W.A. had already gained that trust/credibility (ethos) from the community because of how high their status was at the time (famous

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.

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

N.W.A’s first album ‘Straight Outta Compton’ influenced a number of films depicting inner-city violence, such as “Boyz N The Hood” and “Menace II Society.” N.W.A influenced an attitude change about rap music and its impact. ‘Straight Outta Compton’ changed what was considered extreme and explicit. N.W.A’s music affected people similarly to Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album that introduced grunge in 1991. Their music allowed for a certain freedom. Now rappers were free to speak their minds no matter how explicit their lyrics were. “At

“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

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

Rap music provides information, in addition to making issues salient that otherwise may not have garnered much attention outside minority communities. For example, seminal west coast gangster rap group NWA (Niggas with Attitude) accentuate the problem of police brutality in minority communities. Their infamous song ' 'F the Police" resulted in memos from police departments and eventually the CIA. Because the song was deemed a threat to officers across the nation, more serious discussions occurred that questioned the significance, truth, and accuracy of police brutality in minority communities. Years later, rappers Jay-Z and Chamillionaire assisted in the discussions of police brutality and racial profiling with the very popular rap songs "99 Problems" and "Ridin' Dirty" respectively. Through these songs artists were able to demonstrate that issues that plagued the Black community, as publicized by NWA, and the Rodney King beating almost all thirty years ago, were still relevant issues in urban communities today. Such issues include the controversial New York police strategy of stop and frisk and the shootings of unarmed black men by the police force. An examination of how attitudes are formed, followed by an analysis of the influence of music on attitudes in general and on political attitudes specifically,

In her article, “From Compton to Cape Town: Black(faceless)ness and the Appropriation of Gangsta Rap in Die Antwoord's “Fok Julle Naaiers,” Kitchiner Lanisa brings up a quote from “The Art of Rap” where Ice Cube adds that “[Gangsta rap] is street knowledge…[Its] letting the streets know what the politicians is trying to do to them. And then, letting the politicians know what the streets think of them, if they listening” (77). This quote implies that their lyrics told everything that the minorities wanted to tell the authorities and lyrics also informed the colored people about the injustice. By admitting the fact that Ice Cube presented, it is undeniable to say that the lyrics had a great impact on making colored people mindful about their rights. In conclusion, the lyrics of gangsta rap produced an anti-authority movement because of the fact that the authority was using illegal power against colored

N.W.A's Fuck tha Police, from 1988's album 'Straight Outta Compton', is a protest song about police brutality and racial profiling. Highlighting many of the tensions between black urban youth and the police.  It was ranked number 425 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song is infamous for its inflammatory lyrics approval of violence against police. N.W.A even got the attention/backlash of the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service. The FBI wrote to N.W.A's record company about the lyrics expressing disapproval and arguing that the song misrepresented police.

One of the recurring tropes in these songs is police brutality and corruption.Throughout all of these songs the police and authoritarian figures are all depicted as white men. Often these figures were shown using military equipment or dressed in dark clothes like special forces members. This militarized police force seems to show that police treat poor blacks in the situations of these artists as an enemy rather than citizens they're trying to protect.

In Fuck Tha Police by N.W.A. The song was released in 1988 by Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy E, Yella, and Dr. Dre about police brutality. The opening verse Ice Cube raps, “Fuck the police! Comin’ straight from the underground / 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…” The verses here relate directly to the topic brought in Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. In the song, they talk about the police having the power to kill them solely based on the color of their skin. Also, the verse raises questions. Why attack/target African Americans? Then, Ice Cube continues rapping in the verse singing, “Fuck that shit, ‘cause I ain't the one / For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun / To be beating on, and thrown in jail / We can go toe-to-toe in the middle of a cell.” Here Ice Cube talks about the police hiding behind their position to abuse minorities because of the gun and badge. This relates to where Coates talks about the police having the power to destroy your (black) bodies. The song is highly relevant to the events occurring of police brutality and can be seen chanted in the street during protests against police brutality. Ice Cube even recently said, “Fuck Tha Police’ was 400 years in the making. And it’s still just as relevant as it was before it was made.”

Soon after, rappers began to protest in a way that made it hard to be ignored. The early themes of crime and violence in rap sought to protest and break silence. The time between the 1980’s and 1990’s was critical for the hip hop culture because they were forced to revolutionize. The place that many African Americans called home had been ignored and left to deteriorate, as the book by Rabaka expresses, “black America in the 1980’s and early 1990’s seemed like and was, thus, like a long-lost wasteland or de-industrialized desert” (255). Since the government was not listening to their community, individuals developed a way to explicitly protest. Rappers employed violence and crime in music because they wanted to break silence and speak against the inequality that many African Americans were living. The book Hip Hop Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reasons expresses, “Violence of some kind was recognized as necessary for breaking the conspiracy of silence, and complacency about economic oppression, police violence, and other social ills of the black inner city,” to explain that crime and violence was needed to make a point (Shelby

The power of music is as strong today as it has ever been before. Throughout history music has been a way for our people to speak out against the government or follow their commands. There is a great irony that a lot of these songs nowadays all tie together to portray the same message, and this is not a coincidence. “Today, hip-hop has taken the lead in protesting police brutality and the injustices suffered by the poor.” Within the selection of songs, the audience can see how the government tries to control us, as well as how there is still much racism going on today.

The juxtaposition of Tupac’s image of a gangsta’ rapper and utilizing his celebrity to inform audiences of the systemic and structural oppression the African American population encounters is truly inspiring. According to Brown, “through his music, Shakur illustrates that he is a social critic and a good example of Black protest music. At its core, black protest music is characterized by the expression of resistance and the articulation of the heartache and pain that Blacks have endured throughout history. Likewise, Shakur as a social critic conveys through his music the despair, anger, and resentment that resonates with many African Americans” (2005). Just as in, the song “Changes” where he illuminates social oppression that affect the African American population. For example, just within the first stanza, Tupac makes reference to poverty and welfare, issues of substance abuse, and racism. Tupac stated “I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black” making the correlation between his skin color and the poverty in which he grew up. He goes on to reinforce this connection further by stating, and “My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.” He also illustrates the relationship between police brutality and race by declaring, “Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.”

“Fuck the Police” by NWA is more than a group of black men, cursing and speaking vulgarly about police. This song is told through three different POV’s, Oshea Jackson aka Ice Cube, Lorenzo Patterson aka MC Ren, and Eric Wright aka Eazy E. The different POV’s, show people the constant discrimination and unfairness they face against the police and their stereotyping.