The political protest music I picked is “Fuck tha Police” by N.W.A. I think that the artist created this piece of music because during the time they lived in there were a lot of racial tensions between law enforcement and minorities. This song’s purpose was to expose law enforcement for police brutality and racial profiling. The music genre that this piece is associated with is Hip-Hop. I think that Hip-Hop has always been political, rap was invented to highlight injustices that happen in communities in which people have felt neglected. From what I have noticed there are many political campaigns that have famous hip-hop artists involved so they can increase the fan base and the relationship between hip-hop and politics.

In the first verse Ice Cube said, “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.” Racial profiling and discrimination reached a high in the late 80’s after the appearance of crack in 1986. By Straight Out of Compton’s release in 1988, there were 762,718 yearly arrests for drug possession, almost twice as many as the 400,000 in 1981. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, supposedly targeted the African American community because the percentage of crack cocaine users were African American. I think the musical characteristic that is useful for a political protest would be the song’s chorus, “Fuck tha police!”. The chorus highlights the purpose of this song and it isolates who they artists want the music to influence.

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