The sound of Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power” echoed as masked demonstrators in Washington, D.C. began an impromptu electric slide dance near the White House. Captured on the morning of June 14, an Instagram user remarked, “If Trump is in the White House this morning, he’s waking up to a Public Enemy dance party.” The song became fitting background music amidst the broad protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the United States.
It begins with a civil rights activist Thomas “TNT” Todd’s quote before transitioning into a sample-heavy funk rap track, citing previous Black protest songs by the Isley Brothers and James Brown. Similarly, hip-hop became a tool for sonic protest across other U.S. cities. In New York, protesters chanted the chorus of Ludacris’s 2001 song “Move B—-” while being contained on the Manhattan Bridge by police. Video footage showing the crowd singing, “Move b—-, get out the way. Get out the way b—-, get out the way” directed at uniformed officers received approval from Ludacris, who shared a clip on his Twitter account with a raised fist emoji.
Those familiar with hip-hop’s history since its emergence in the 1970s likely anticipated rap music’s role as a protest soundtrack following George Floyd’s death in police custody on May 25 in Minneapolis. Hip-hop artists have been addressing police violence in their music for decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rappers nationwide detailed the harsh and unjust police practices in their communities. Among the most renowned is N.W.A.’s 1988 track “F— tha Police.” Los Angeles rapper Ice T also faced criticism after his group, Body Count, released “Cop Killer” in 1992. The Geto Boys highlighted racial profiling and police brutality in the South in their 1993 song “Crooked Officer,” expressing the sentiment with: “Mr. Officer, crooked officer, I wanna put your a** in a coffin, sir.” In the same year, KRS-One from New York linked the racist foundations of American policing to the late 20th-century NYPD with the track “Sound of da Police,” referring to officers as “wicked overseers.” As a cultural historian examining the ties between race and music, I recognize that Black American protest music’s rich history predates hip-hop.
This tradition reaches back to Southern blues and extends through jazz and rhythm and blues. For instance, the “Joe Turner Blues,” possibly originating in the late 1800s, encapsulates early forms of this tradition. Folklorist Alan Lomax explained that Black residents in the Mississippi Delta used the song to describe a white sheriff, Joe Turner, who dispatched Black men to chain gangs or levee work. The lyrics tell of a romantic loss: “They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone. Got my man and gone.” Songs like “Joe Turner Blues” also connect this custom to songs by enslaved Africans warning of Southern slave patrols pursuing runaways. Like hip-hop, protest against law enforcement originated from communities of color across the nation. Blues musician Texas Alexander from east Texas cited false murder and forgery allegations in “Levee Camp Moan Blues,” lamenting, “They accused me of forgery; I can’t even write my name.” This line criticizes both Texas’s segregated schools and corrupt law enforcement. In the 1950s and 1960s, jazz musicians contributed to the civil rights movement with songs like Charles Mingus’ “Original Faubus Fables” and Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam.”
Black musicians explicitly addressed racial profiling and police brutality. Marvin Gaye tackled this issue on his 1971 album, “What’s Going On.” “Trigger happy policing” is listed among many social issues in “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” where he pleads, “don’t punish me with brutality” on the album’s title track. Protesters also repurposed seemingly apolitical Motown songs against police brutality. As protests against police violence erupted in places like Watts, Detroit, and Newark between 1965 and 1967, “Dancing in the Street” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas became part of urban protest music. Expressing anti-police views in songs isn’t unique to the Black American experience. Texans of Mexican descent have narrated their encounters with law enforcement in Spanish for centuries through Southwestern corridos – narrative ballads.
Like the blues embraced by Black Americans, corridos from the Rio Grande Valley in the 19th and early 20th centuries often depicted conflicts between Anglo-American law enforcement and Mexican Americans. “El corrido de Gregorio Cortez” recounts a 1901 incident where an Anglo-American sheriff shot Romaldo Cortez. Gregorio, his brother, retaliated by killing the sheriff and evading the Texas Rangers for 10 days. Gregorio is hailed as a hero resisting Anglo-American supremacy with the line, “They had a shootout and he killed another sheriff. Gregorio Cortez said with his pistol in his hand, ‘Don’t run, you cowardly Rangers, from one lone Mexican.’” Whether originating from blues or corridos, Mexican and Black American music criticized how police reinforced white political, economic, and social power.
Today, Latino activists highlight shared concerns about race and policing in their support for Black Lives Matter. Recording artists continue to use music to protest police violence in communities of color. Los Angeles rapper YG released “FTP” on June 4, inspired by N.W.A.’s “F— tha Police.” Similarly, hip-hop producer Terrace Martin released “Pig Feet,” addressing current unrest with lines like: “Helicopters over my balcony. If the police can’t harass, they wanna smoke every ounce of me.”