Beto
Hoyos
Dr.
Steph Brown
ENG
306
9/15/16
Fuck
The Police
In the 1980s, Los Angeles was a
place full of racial tension and police brutality. In 2016 things are still far
from perfect, but today people are constantly connected and therefore are more
exposed to the injustices and the unfair treatment of minorities by police. In
1988 the Compton rap group N.W.A released their highly controversial song Fuck Tha Police on their first album,
Straight Outta Compton. Police brutality was occurring in L.A before N.W.A and
it still occurs more than 25 years after the songs creation.
The object here is the entire song
and its lyrics. Plenty of people may have felt the same way the group felt at
the time, but it was N.W.A who had the platform to shake things up. When the song
begins, Ice Cube immediately mentions how police treat African Americans with
the opening lyric; fuck the police coming
straight out the underground/ a young nigga got it bad ‘cuz I’m brown/ and not
the other color so police think, they got the authority/ to kill a minority.
Listeners are given the reason why the song was made in the first place. Fast
forward to today, this song remains relevant with all of the fatal shootings by
police across the country in the last couple of years. Today the song has been
adopted by some among the Black Lives
Matter movement.
N.W.A was a group that was never
afraid to speak their minds. They carried around an attitude which made them
intimidating while at the same time made it easy to admire them. After all, the
A in the acronym does stand for Attitude,
and that attitude was present in their music, lyrics and personas. The lyrics
were controversial. The beats were hard hitting, in your face and fast paced.
Dr. Dre was great producer then and in 2016 he still holds that reputation. The
group formed by Andre Young (Dr. Dre) consisted of his neighborhood friend O’Shea
Jackson (Ice Cube) who wrote most of the raps, Lorenzo Patterson (MC Ren) a
strong performer and skilled lyricist, Antoine Carraby (DJ Yella) who handled
the turn tables and added that extra flavor, and of course Eric Wright (Eazy-E)
who was the often grandiose, outspoken lead rapper.
The story about the songs origin
claims that Ice Cube and the rest of the group were standing outside of a
recording studio when two officers came up to the group and began questioning
them. Immediately the officers had them get down on the ground while they were cuffed
and searched. The claim was supported in the bio pic based on the group Straight Outta Compton. Ice Cube immediately
began writing down the lyrics and recorded the song that day(Grey). When the
group released this song they may have unconsciously appealed to the emotional
strings of their audience.
The groups purpose with the song was to
enlighten people on what had been going on in the inner city for too long. It
was social injustice at the hands of police which sparked the Watts riots of
the 60s. The fires of Watts may have been extinguished long ago, a fire still
burns in the memories of many. Black lives matter co founder Patrisse Cullors
says that the tension from Watts are still smoldering (Mozingo). Not just Ice
Cube but the entire group felt they needed to bring these issues to the
forefront. In a 2015 interview with Billboard Magazine Ice Cube said he wanted
to make a song people from his community could rally around (Gale). Cube tried
to warn people about what was going to happen. Although all members were
talented in their own way, it was Cube who was the more conscious and political.
Once Cube left, the groups music became less political.
The reason this song has such
staying power and timelessness is because not too much has changed since the
late 80s when the group was seeing and experiencing all these same injustices
as today. Ice Cube experienced this first hand one night while walking in front
of his house he was mistaken for another person and pushed up against a cop car
while bystanders including his parents stood by (Grey). For example, in 2011
612 people were killed in L.A county and 54 people were killed by officers or
deputies, almost 70% more than in 2010 (Ruben). In 2015 the Department of
Justice issued a report stating that Ferguson Police showed a pattern of clear
racial disparities and discriminatory intent prior to and during the protests
(Wihbey).
All of these issues have an effect
on the way the public views and feels about police. A USA today poll from
August 2014 found that Americans of all races give relatively low marks to
police departments across the nation when it comes to holding officers accountable
for misconduct (Wihbey). In the previously mentioned Billboard interview, Cube
agrees that not all police are bad or racist but thinks those who do act in
that manner should be held accountable (Gale).
Its always been the songs which
contain an important message or evoke a certain amount of emotion which stand
the test of time. This song managed to do both. Dre and Cube went on to
establish successful brands for themselves, Eazy-E sadly passed away in 1995,
and MC Ren and DJ Yella went on to live normal lives away from the spotlight.
Although the group split up in the mid 90s the music which they created together
will be a song to rally around while rallying against police injustices and
unfair treatment of minorities.
Works
Cited
Straight
Outta Compton. Dir. F. Gary Grey. By Andre Young. Screenplay by Jonathan
Herman. Perf. O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Paul Giamatti, Jason Mitchell.
Universal Pictures, 2015. Film.
Goldstien,
Rich. "A Brief History of the Phrase "Fuck the Police""
Thedailybeast.com. The Daily Beast, 23 Aug. 14. Web. 14 Sept. 16.
Ruben,
Joel, and Sarah Ardalani. "Killings by Police Jump Sharply."
Articles.latimes.com. Los Angeles Times, 12 June 2012. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.
Wihbey,
John. "Research on Law Enforcement and Racial Conflict."
Journalistsresource.org. Journalist's Resource, 28 July 2016. Web. 14 Sept.
2016.
Mozingo,
Joe, and Angel Jennings. "50 Years after Watts: 'There Is Still a Crisis
in the Black Community'" Latimes.com. Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2015.
Web. 14 Sept. 2016.
Gale,
Alex. "Ice Cube: Police Have Become Our Worst Bullies."
Billboard.com. Billboard Magazine, 13 Aug. 2015. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.
Firstly, great job on the establishing the context of the object! I really appreciated the story of Ice Cube’s encounter with the police on the fourth paragraph because it really explained the motivation to create the song. Regarding the other components of the rhetorical situation, the intended audience was not addressed explicitly; when you state, “The groups purpose with the song was to enlighten people on what had been going on in the inner city for too long”, you can replace “people” with the specific intended audience instead. With respect to the rhetorical strategies, I did not see any analysis of ethos and logos; there was the statement in the essay, “appealed to the emotional strings of their audience”, which is pathos, but there was not much of an analysis of how the lyrics (which is the object) appealed to pathos. Thus, I would recommend that you analyze the lyrics of the song and see how Ice Cube utilized those rhetorical strategies to achieve his purpose.
ReplyDeleteThe next thing I would like to discuss is the organization of the essay. Firstly, I was not able to identify a clear thesis. As a consequence, the organization of the essay was unclear. I must say, however, that the paragraphs themselves were very organized; each paragraph had topic sentences that were then articulated.
Overall, there needs to be a global revision of the essay; you should analyze the ethos, pathos, logos appeals. The purpose of the paper is to address the rhetorical situation, then analyze the rhetorical strategies present in the object. Additionally, the essay really explored the rhetorical situation in depth; because the rhetorical situation should ideally not be the bulk of the paper, I would recommend that you remove some of the paragraphs you wrote. For example, the paragraph of the Watts riot could be removed because it is not required for understanding the rhetorical situation of the song.
To agree with Kathy, there is a lot of context about the piece you are analyzing. Before I get into the rhetorical situation, I figure I comment about the organization of the context. The paper starts off with general context about the violence in L.A. and then the paper begins analyzing the specific lyrics of the song. Usually, once the chunk of context opens the floor to analyze the rhetoric, there is little context presented later unless there is a turning point in the argument. For you, it seems like the context (like Ice Cube’s experiences mentioned in Kathy’s response) could be mostly move before your heavy analysis of the song. You can also integrate some context if you prefer as well, but the paper seems to have a context to analysis to more context type of format. Your analysis would then not be drowned out of context. Some context, like Ice Cube leaving the group I personally don’t see as relevant for analyzing the rhetorical effectiveness of the lyrics – so those pieces of context can be excluded.
ReplyDeleteI also concur that there should be a global revision to include more analysis of the rhetorical strategies. Something that could easily be done would be the vulgarity of the song (even in the title). This could contribute to your pathos analysis. As mentioned above, there isn’t any logos or ethos mentioned in the piece. If finding ethos is hard in the lyrics, you can even look at the music group and how famous they are and how accessible they could make their songs to their fans.
In the 3rd to last paragraph, the paper goes into how the song is timeless and the song still have power. I think it’s a valid point to mention that the song is being referenced decades later after its release. Embellishing the idea that the song was taken up by various groups (like Black Lives Matter) would prove the protest effectiveness in gathering members for the movement. Also including those embellishments in the conclusion would be best.
Revision plan:
ReplyDelete1) Include analysis of ethos, pathos, logos
2) write thesis mentioning the rhetorical strategies
3) Determine relevent and irrelevent context
4) Get rid of context that is irrelevant to understand purpose of song
5) Place relevent context at beginning of essay
6) The timelessness portion of essay; you can add that in the conclusion instead
I really like your take on the issue. I now have a clear idea on what this matter is all about.. https://www.mosscolella.com/
ReplyDelete