Justice

N.W.A Just Reunited to Perform 'F--- Tha Police'

June 29th 2015

In 1988, N.W.A. released the album "Straight Outta Compton," featuring the song "Fuck Tha Police," which went on to become a legendary anthem about police brutality. "Fuck Tha Police," which prompted the FBI to send a letter of warning to N.W.A for celebrating "violence against and disrespect" for authorities, remains relevant nearly three decades after its debut. That's why N.W.A. rappers Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella came together to perform the song over the weekend at the BET Experience live in Los Angeles. Ice Cube and Yella hadn't performed together since the late 1980s, and Ice Cube hadn't performed with MC Ren in fifteen years. (Dr. Dre didn't perform with his former rap group, and Eazy-E, another member, died 20 years ago.)

The rappers performed alongside footage of Black Lives Matter protests, the McKinney pool party controversy that involved a white officer aggressively interacting with Black teenagers, the officer shooting of unarmed, Black man Walter Scott, Michael Brown, and other recent images depicting police brutality.

The performance comes a few months before "Straight Outta Compton," the N.W.A. biopic on the group's climb to the top of the rap scene, is scheduled to hit theaters. The film reportedly depicts the struggle the group faced for exposing America's race problem during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Actor Paul Giamatti portrays their manager who stood up for their creative freedoms even when the federal government came after their musical messages:

"We kicked the door down for a lot of artists," Dr. Dre says in the trailer. "The same thing that we was going through in the 80s with the police, people going through right now."

Ice Cube also chimed in, "We put it all in the music, all our frustration and anger, our music was like our weapon."

"Fuck Tha Police" includes lyrics such as, "Lights start flashing behind me/ But they're scared of a n*gger so they mace me to blind me ...They put up my picture with silence/Cause my identity by itself causes violence."

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