Officer, crooked officer, I wanna put your ass in a coffin, sir.” In the same year, New York’s KRS-One referenced the racist origins of American policing in “ Sound of da Police,” connecting the violent tactics used against enslaved Africans to the NYPD of the late 20th century and referring to an officer as a “wicked overseer.”Īs a cultural historian who studies connections between race and music, I know that the rich history of protest in Black American music started much earlier than hip-hop. In the Geto Boys’ “ Crooked Officer” from 1993, the Houston rap group bears witness to racial profiling and police violence in the so-called Dirty South, before asserting: “Mr. Fellow Los Angeles rapper Ice T faced backlash after his metal band, Body Count, released “Cop Killer” in 1992. Most famous perhaps is N.W.A.’s “F- tha Police” from 1988. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rappers from different corners of the United States described the brutal and discriminatory police tactics they witnessed in their communities. Hip-hop artists have protested police violence in their music for decades. No one who has listened to hip-hop since its origins in the 1970s should be surprised that rap music has become the soundtrack to protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis on May 25 while in police custody. Protesters chanting Ludacris’ lyrics on the Manhattan Bridge: “Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way” #nycprotests /WwojcodRUY Get out the way b-, get out the way” to uniformed officers seemingly got the approval of Ludacris, who reposted a video on his Twitter account accompanied by a raised fist emoji. In New York, protesters chanted the hook to Ludacris’s 2001 song “Move B-” as they were penned in on the Manhattan Bridge by police officers.įootage of the crowd singing, “Move b-, get out the way. It opens with a quote from civil rights activist Thomas “TNT” Todd before going into a sample-laden funk rap track referencing past black protest songs from the Isley Brothers and James Brown.ĭemonstrators in other parts of the country similarly used hip-hop as a form of sonic protest.

If Trump is in the White House this morning he’s being woken up by a Public Enemy dance party (Repost )Ī post shared by Pearl on at 12:11pm PDTĬoming amid widespread protests over police brutality and structural racism in the United States, the song is an apt musical backdrop.

Isley brothers songs used by rappers