5/5/2023 0 Comments Pop smoke diorThe kids who wish that they, too, could just buy luxury things and make sure their Amiri jeans don’t slip off while Woo Walking at the function, all without a lingering fear in the back of their minds. It feels fitting that Pop Smoke is even now acting as the voice of New York’s often unheard Black kids. Have you ever had an NYPD officer throw you against the wall and aggressively pat you down in search of drugs you never had? Have you ever felt the chill run down your spine when you’re driving through the city and you see that cop car pull a U-turn to follow you? Have you ever made that eye contact with an officer where you can just tell they think nothing of you? Every Black kid in New York has-and Pop Smoke had, too. In New York, a Black teenager’s relationship with the NYPD is tense. To this day, explicit protest songs have a place in the rap community one of hip-hop’s biggest accomplishments of the last decade was Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, a celebration of Black life and art in the face of the powers that fight against it. The government used claims of vulgarity and violence to qualify their censorship and monitoring of the genre, but they really feared the rage and frustration behind songs like N.W.A.’s “ Fuck tha Police.” They were desperate to keep anti-police sentiment from spreading and frightened that these candid retellings of the Black experience would reveal that the police state was the real issue. After the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles, which began with the acquittal of the police officers who brutally beat Rodney King, rap became a target. Similar struggles were at the foundation of rap’s signature protest songs of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Often, the anger in these songs is justifiably directed at the police’s abuse of power, a tactic they’ve used for decades to keep the communities they fear from uprising. During times of rebellion, anthems like Bob Marley’s “ I Shot the Sheriff,” Nina Simone’s “ Mississippi Goddam,” Marvin Gaye’s “ What’s Going On,” and many more have amplified issues of injustice. Born out of anger and exasperation, these songs have fueled our motivation and served as reminders of what’s at stake-equality and a complete upheaval of the systems that were built to oppress Black people. Update your settings here to see it.įor generations, Black protest songs have had revolution in sight. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.
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