How N.W.A's 'Fuck tha Police' Became the 'Perfect Protest Song'
Over the last week, N.W.A’s fierce indictment of racial injustice, “Fuck tha Police,” has become the anthem of a revolution, as thousands all over the world have taken to the streets in outrage over the wrongful killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Protesters have scrawled the song title on the homemade signs they wave and spray-painted it to walls. They’ve also been playing the 32-year-old track, which appeared on the group’s landmark Straight Outta Compton LP, so much that it experienced a nearly 300 percent uptick in streams.
That statistic doesn’t sit particularly well with one of the song’s cowriters. “This shit is unfortunate,” MC Ren says on a call shortly after a memorial for Floyd was televised. “A lot of people would be happy that they song gets streamed, but it’s unfortunate, because look how it came about: George Floyd — that was some bullshit. Enough is enough.”
Although N.W.A first raised eyebrows when MTV banned the video for “Straight Outta Compton,” it was “Fuck tha Police” that gave the group its legacy. In about six minutes, MCs Ice Cube, Ren, and Eazy-E serve as prosecutors against the overzealous LAPD, accusing cops of pulling them over in their cars and raiding their homes, over a hard-hitting beat while the track’s producer, Dr. Dre, presides as judge. “Fuck the police comin’ straight from the underground,” Ice Cube raps. “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.” In Ren’s verse, he raps, “Taking out a police would make my day, but a nigga like Ren don’t give a fuck to say… fuck the police.” Both Ren and Cube were only 19 years old when they recorded the track, which has taken on new life in recent years.
Streams of “Fuck tha Police” surged in late 2014 and early 2015 — according to Alpha Data, the analytics provider that powers the Rolling Stone charts — as people protested and mourned the deaths of many unarmed black men who died from the actions of policemen, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York and Freddie Gray, in Baltimore. When Black Lives Matter held a vigil to honor Brown on the one-year anniversary of his death, streams of the song had increased nearly 44 times from the week of his death. The track experienced another surge in January 2016, when Black Lives Matter led a march in San Francisco ahead of Super Bowl 50. Streams of the song have continued to ebb and flow in the months since then as stories of police brutality became national news.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/nwa-fuck-tha-police-protest-song-1010355/
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