In today’s rap/hip hop scene, most music consists of telling stories of love, pain, fame, and glory. This generation of musicians have the freedom to express themselves without the worry censorship, contrary to the 80s rap group NWA. NWA group members Ice Cube, Dr.Dre, Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella produced music that shook a nation, and police departments.
Entering the rap game in the 1980s as teenagers, NWA’s legacy has continued to extend itself to this generations teens. The rap groups biopic, Straight Outta Compton, hit theaters this year and has sparked a movement of police brutality awareness throughout the nation.
Straight Outta Compton had scenes highlighting police harassment and shed a negative light on police. “Police in our society are trained to win at all costs. They’re not trained to uphold the law, to know your rights, to protect,” Ice Cube said in an interview with The Daily Beast.
With tensions between the people and police already high from the violent protests in Ferguson, police felt as if the timing of this movie’s release was damaging. In an interview with Fox News, former D.C. Homicide Detective Rod Wheeler gave his opinion on how the movie sends an “anti-police” message:
“…It adds fuel to the fire” Wheeler said,”they want to keep tension between the black community and police community.”
NWA group member Ice Cube feels that S.O.C. release came during a critical time. Featuring scenes that mention the Rodney King incident, S.O.C. connects to the current police issue in America.
“There’s been a thousand Rodney Kings every year that we don’t hear about…” Said Ice Cube, also adding that even with the technology we have today “that s**t is still usually done in the dark — and that’s what makes our movie relevant today, and makes N.W.A relevant today.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, NWA discussed their history of encounters with police and the FBI. Controversial songs like F**k the Police brought trouble to NWA at a Detroit show when police pressed the rap group to not perform that song, and refused to provide security for the show:
“We was like, ‘Man, you know what?We’re gonna do the song!”
The show was stopped and NWA was detained (without any charges).
This generation’s “F**k the police” is the Black Lives Matter movement. First starting out as a hashtag on Twitter, Black Lives Matter is a black activist movement shedding light on acts of police brutality that go unpunished. NWA opened the doors for this type of social activism, without controversial songs or their civil disobedience, their might still have been a limitation on how free our freedom of speech is.
