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The FBI versus Hip-Hop · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give it up up up for
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Speaker 1: our super producer, our very own DJ, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's big and Max Williams Yes.
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Speaker 1: And to the South Bronx, to the West Coast, to
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Speaker 1: the East Coast, the Gulf Coast sometimes called the third Coast.
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Speaker 1: To the South, the South's got something to say, but
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Speaker 1: the South has something to say.
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Speaker 3: Doesn't really figure into this particular story of hip hop
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Speaker 3: was a little bit later, but boy, Ben, you uncovered
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Speaker 3: a doozy of an episode today in honor of the
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Speaker 3: fiftieth that's right, fiftieth anniversary of a truly American art form,
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Speaker 3: hip hop. We got jazz and we got hip hop.
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Speaker 3: There's other ones peppered in threst. Well, those are the
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Speaker 3: two biggies, musical theater maybe well the blues first, of course,
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Speaker 3: that's true. That's true.
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Speaker 1: And your Nola and I'm Ben, and we are as
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Speaker 1: you said, my friend, we are celebrating, along with several
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Speaker 1: of our peer podcasts, we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary
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Speaker 1: of hip hop an American art form that has united
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Speaker 1: the world, even while at times it divided its home country.
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Speaker 1: Since this is a music episode, man, I thought it
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Speaker 1: was going to be appropriate to let our good, ridiculous
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Speaker 1: historians out there know about another music related project that
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Speaker 1: you and your team have just debuted. It comes out
2:02
Speaker 1: today as we're recording, and so that means that as
2:06
Speaker 1: people are listening to this episode, you can check out
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Speaker 1: Nole's new show today.
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Speaker 3: Ken And speaking of think you've been speaking of the Blues,
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Speaker 3: The Rolling Stones, contrary to what a lot of people
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Speaker 3: be associate with them, were always kind of a blues group.
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Speaker 3: They considered themselves and the people that handled them considered
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Speaker 3: themselves pure blues musicians. And they really did come from
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Speaker 3: that tradition, that very American tradition, which is weird considering
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Speaker 3: they are a group of British punks in the seventies,
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Speaker 3: in the period we're talking about on this podcast, Stones
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Speaker 3: touring party making an album in the south of France,
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Speaker 3: under the influence of heavy narcotics with criminals, you know,
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Speaker 3: squatting in this crazy villa in villain Nellcott in Nice, France,
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Speaker 3: and it turned out one of the greatest rock and
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Speaker 3: roll slash blues albums of all Time, Exile on Main
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Speaker 3: Street and the subsequent nineteen SEIWO Tour, which was kind
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Speaker 3: of the archetype for rock and roll tours. And this podcast,
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Speaker 3: made with my dear friend Jordan Runtog, friend of the show,
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Speaker 3: and Michael june Alder, also friend of the show, contains
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Speaker 3: a lot of original music that we did on our
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Speaker 3: team and Jordan's incredible writing and narration, and original interviews
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Speaker 3: with the Stones themselves from this period that no one's
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Speaker 3: ever heard before. Courtesy of our buddy Robert Greenfield, who
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Speaker 3: was an excellent journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine who covered
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Speaker 3: the Stones during that era of their career, and he
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Speaker 3: along with his buddy Gary Stromberg, who did pr for
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Speaker 3: the Stones during this era, are heavily featured on the
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Speaker 3: show as well and gave us incredible access. And it's
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Speaker 3: not just a raw rock and roll kind of show.
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Speaker 3: There's a lot of true crime in there, you know,
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Speaker 3: with the drug stuff smuggling, all kinds of criminals running
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Speaker 3: drugs in the South of France and just America in
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Speaker 3: this kind of era of just fighting in the streets
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Speaker 3: and racial protests and violence and Watergate and all of
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Speaker 3: this stuff that's just going crazy through the lens of
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Speaker 3: the Rolling Stones touring America. So that's my spiel Stone
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Speaker 3: Sturing party. Check it out wherever you get podcast. Episode
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Speaker 3: one is out today. It's called America in Flames, Stones
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Speaker 3: in Danger, So.
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Speaker 1: Do check it out, folks. This is a deep dive
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Speaker 1: into iconic seminal music. And you could say the same
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Speaker 1: thing about hip hop, you know, in general. Throughout my
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Speaker 1: entire life, I can say I've met three people who
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Speaker 1: told me they just don't get music. And that's out
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Speaker 1: of millions and millions of people that I've had the
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Speaker 1: fortune and misfortune to run into during my various adventures
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Speaker 1: and misadventures.
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Speaker 2: Why wouldn't people like music? Right?
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Speaker 1: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had this beautiful quote. He is one
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Speaker 1: of the first guys in the West to say music
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Speaker 1: is the universal language of mankind. Boscott had a quote
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Speaker 1: that I enjoyed even more, and I think you guys
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Speaker 1: will like it too. Boscot said, painting is how we
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Speaker 1: decorate space. Music is how we decorate time. It's brilliant,
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Speaker 1: It's totally.
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Speaker 3: True as a music nerd, and you know, studio rat
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Speaker 3: when you're recording music. You know, in the era of computers,
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Speaker 3: you're working on a timeline literally, you're arranging sounds, you know,
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Speaker 3: from left to right, you know, through the progression of time.
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Speaker 3: I think that is such an incredible and appropriate quote.
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Speaker 3: And we're talking also about decorating time with sound historically speaking,
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Speaker 3: you know that that is sort of what the story
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Speaker 3: of hip hop is. It is the decoration of time
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Speaker 3: through music, through recontextualization of other music. It's such a
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Speaker 3: cool mishmash kind of art form that becomes its own
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Speaker 3: kind of musical history lesson in and of itself through sampling.
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Speaker 3: And we did a whole episode on recently as well
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Speaker 3: as a lot in common with this episode and turntablism,
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Speaker 3: which we're going to get into, and protests. You know,
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Speaker 3: that really is at the heart of the original kind
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Speaker 3: of days of hip hop, especially the era that we're
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Speaker 3: talking about today. That's the FBI and c you know,
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Speaker 3: forces in American government took issue with m M.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it's funny. In twenty nineteen, a
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Speaker 1: Harvard study I found seemed to prove that Longfellow was correct.
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Speaker 1: This is a pretty new study. They said some songs
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Speaker 1: and patterns of noise, if you want to be scientific
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Speaker 1: about it, just sound quote unquote right to people across
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Speaker 1: the world. And while entertainment may seem, you know, entertaining,
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Speaker 1: it's also a powerful technology. It's a way to convey
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Speaker 1: social and cultural concerns. The cliche is it's a mirror
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Speaker 1: held up to society. But of course cliches are only
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Speaker 1: cliches because they are true. If you have control over
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Speaker 1: books and art, over film and music, then you have
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Speaker 1: gone a long way toward controlling how a society sees itself.
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Speaker 1: So we want to look at one particularly a ridiculous
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Speaker 1: example of this American musical history again and in honor
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Speaker 1: of the anniversary of hip hop, a moral panic that
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Speaker 1: occurred when authorities experienced new music something they felt threatened
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Speaker 1: in their mind. The status quo alluded to it just
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Speaker 1: a bit. The question why on earth, out of all
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Speaker 1: the things the Federal Bureau of Investigation has to worry about,
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Speaker 1: why on Earth what they focus on harassing a group
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Speaker 1: of young, very poor kids in nineteen eighties Los Angeles.
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Speaker 3: Doesn't it just kind of seem quaint now, ben like
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Speaker 3: this concept of them going out of their way being
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Speaker 3: the FBI to mess with you know, this kind of
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Speaker 3: upstart community of you know, bee boys and turntable lists
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Speaker 3: and rappers and this new kind of culture that was
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Speaker 3: emerging in Los Angeles. But not only that, the songs
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Speaker 3: that we're going to get into now comparatively seem quite quaint,
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Speaker 3: you know, in terms of the moral panic you mentioned
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Speaker 3: a moral panic, Ben, which is just kind of a
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Speaker 3: manufactured outrage surrounding the idea of something that could quote
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Speaker 3: unquote corrupt the youth or create mass hysteria or whatever
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Speaker 3: flavor you want to refer to. But like you go
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Speaker 3: back and listen to the lyrics of some of these
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Speaker 3: gangster rap songs we're going to talk about, Boy Howdie
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Speaker 3: are they tame a lot tamer than anybody would have
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Speaker 3: you remember, especially folks like Tipper Gore and the FBI.
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Speaker 3: So to kind of understand, you know, a lot of this,
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Speaker 3: you have to really understand a bit about the origins
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Speaker 3: of rap, which I think is something that fascinates both
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Speaker 3: of us.
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Speaker 2: Ben.
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Speaker 3: You dug deep into some of the earliest examples of
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Speaker 3: sort of rhythmic spoken word with sort of drum circle
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Speaker 3: type music.
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Speaker 1: M Yeah, we're talking about grio. So the story of
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Speaker 1: all your favorite hip hop songs really starts thousands of
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Speaker 1: years ago, albeit indirectly, because way back then millennia in
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Speaker 1: the past, in the continent of Africa, grio would tell
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Speaker 1: these stories while playing handmade instruments, and they may have
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Speaker 1: call and response parts to this too. It came with drums,
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Speaker 1: as you were saying, right, and this was You could
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Speaker 1: think of it as a style of talking somewhere between
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Speaker 1: a ballad and epic poetry or oration. It carried across
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Speaker 1: the Atlantic during the slave trade, and while enslaved peoples
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Speaker 1: were forced to labor in fields and agriculture and other pursuits,
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Speaker 1: they would engage with these traditions of call and response.
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Speaker 1: They would share stories and culture through this grio art form,
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Speaker 1: which continued to evolve. Just so you know where the
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Speaker 1: story begins. Now we're going to fast forward and max
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Speaker 1: just like hold down the fast forward button for a while,
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Speaker 1: where yeah, we're going centuries into the future, all the
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Speaker 1: way to what would later be my birthday August eleventh,
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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three in Bronx, New York.
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Speaker 3: That's so cool. We were both born very close to
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Speaker 3: the birth of hip hop. Can't Be Quit, as was
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Speaker 3: our pal Matt Frederick.
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Speaker 2: Let's see.
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Speaker 1: I think they'll be okay with us disclosing this. Matt's
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Speaker 1: birthday is August fifth, Noel, Yours is August eighth.
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Speaker 2: Correct. Mine is the eleventh, So weird.
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Speaker 3: It's almost like odd numbers, you know, if only mine
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Speaker 3: was on the seventh.
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Speaker 1: No. I still I'm you know what I bet so
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Speaker 1: I can make it.
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Speaker 3: Those three, five, seven, nine, eleventh. Okay, never mind. I'm
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Speaker 3: obviously great at math and numbers and stuff.
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Speaker 2: As was DJ Coolherk Totally. I had this attempted to segue.
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Speaker 2: He was alderful.
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Speaker 3: He was known for his math skills and also mainly
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Speaker 3: known as the first DJ and the founding father of
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Speaker 3: hip hop. He and his sister Cindy started hosting which
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Speaker 3: just sounds so wholesome Ben back to school parties in
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Speaker 3: the rec room of their apartment building. And it was
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Speaker 3: it was here where kind of the early roots of
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Speaker 3: hip hop began to take shape. Do you roots take shape?
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Speaker 3: They sure do. I guess as they grow, that's what
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Speaker 3: they do.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And oh, I've got to ask Max, we we're
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Speaker 1: gonna be rude Winds your birthday?
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Speaker 2: Are you okay? Saying it on air? Oh yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 2: it's April twelve. There's no time related. That's the only
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Speaker 2: reason I didn't mention it. I don't know, it's all.
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Speaker 1: It's all the way though. In my my planning skills
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Speaker 1: are so bad. I'm actually I'm scary good at like freestyling,
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Speaker 1: but planning skills.
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Speaker 2: I need to know. I need to know.
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Speaker 1: April is just enough time for me to get stuff
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Speaker 1: together for your birthday.
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Speaker 3: So freestyling, whether it be on the mic or just
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Speaker 3: you know, at activities, Yeah, yeah, just figuring things out
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Speaker 3: on the fly, I think is a really important skill,
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Speaker 3: and that a lot of that too, really is a
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Speaker 3: skill that goes into these early stages of hip hop
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Speaker 3: where her yeah cool herk is all about like there
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Speaker 3: was my better attempts of transition. Cool heirk is all
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Speaker 3: about like taking stuff that he already has, right to turntable,
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Speaker 3: And a lot of this were people like their parents
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Speaker 3: had a turntable that was a staple of the home.
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Speaker 3: So they take this down to the rec room. Maybe
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Speaker 3: there's already one in the rec room, and hey, wait,
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Speaker 3: maybe let's not just use one, let's take two, you know,
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Speaker 3: and hook them up. They didn't even have probably a
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Speaker 3: proper quote unquote DJ mixer, because that.
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Speaker 2: Wasn't a thing. This is like the beginning.
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Speaker 3: They probably had to hook it up through two inputs
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Speaker 3: on a tuner of some kind, or maybe two completely
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Speaker 3: separate stereos. I would imagine just guessing here, and he
12:33
Speaker 3: would do a thing that is to sometimes referred to
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Speaker 3: as juggling, sometimes referred to as merry go rounding, where
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Speaker 3: you take two copies of the same LP and juggle
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Speaker 3: the break back and forth, or the very least juggle
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Speaker 3: a portion where on the left table you play, you know,
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Speaker 3: up to the point where the break ends, and then
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Speaker 3: you flip over to the other one and you play
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Speaker 3: from there. And it requires some real precision to get
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Speaker 3: that right and to make it sound like a contiguous
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Speaker 3: kind of loop. Now now it's easy to do it
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Speaker 3: in programs like Ableton or whatever, where you can just
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Speaker 3: loop something. And that this is the invention, essentially, or
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Speaker 3: at least the innovation of the idea of looping.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is why so many of your favorite
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Speaker 1: songs and instrumentals exist. And of course it extends well
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Speaker 1: past what would be called hip hop. Now we want
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Speaker 1: to thank a guy named Jim Frick, the editor of
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Speaker 1: the excellent Yes Yes, You All the Experienced Music project
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Speaker 1: oral history of hip hop's first decade.
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Speaker 2: He says, he.
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Speaker 1: Continues, and he confirms your rap is a genre begins
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Speaker 1: at these block parties in New York City in the
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Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies. DJ's start are starting to isolate percussion
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Speaker 1: breaks from disco, from soul, from funk and looping them
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Speaker 1: like you said, Noel extending them and at the time,
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Speaker 1: and there were MC's, but they weren't like they're the stars. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: they were a lot like if you've ever been to
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Speaker 1: a wedding that had a DJ, they were a lot
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Speaker 1: more like wedding DJs.
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Speaker 2: They would come on in between the.
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Speaker 1: Songs, you know, like hey and all the single ladies
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Speaker 1: get out, or like hey, Nana is seventy six, Go Nana.
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Speaker 3: Like a radio DJ, you know, or at least the
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Speaker 3: culture of like think about like the style of speaking,
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Speaker 3: you know, like it probably became more like rap or
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Speaker 3: the rhythmic quality, but it really was just kind of
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Speaker 3: like using all the cool like you know, slang of
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Speaker 3: the time, and like just the rhythm of I'm sound
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Speaker 3: like such a grandpa, like the rhythm of the streets
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Speaker 3: like there was a quality of speech that represented like
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Speaker 3: if you've ever seen what's the Spike Lee movie.
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Speaker 2: Do the Right Thing.
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Speaker 3: There's a character that's like kind of a constant presence
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Speaker 3: in the film who's like a DJ. He has this
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Speaker 3: kind of cool rhythmic quality the flow of which she's
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Speaker 3: introducing the songs, and he becomes this kind of like feature,
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Speaker 3: this almost narrator in the film. That's probably more what
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Speaker 3: early you know MC's were, which stands for Master of
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Speaker 3: Sarah Monies, which is literally the job of someone at
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Speaker 3: an event that kind of keeps things on track, but
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Speaker 3: it's necessarily the star of the show. The music and
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Speaker 3: the dancing was the star of the show right right.
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Speaker 1: The audience, Uh, the the audience was kind of an
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Speaker 1: instrument as well.
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Speaker 2: I would argue that both the DJ and the MC played.
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Speaker 1: There's a lot of Jamaican culture that is inherent in this,
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Speaker 1: in this blend with sound systems right and with the
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Speaker 1: idea of the the PA right, and the MC is
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Speaker 1: part of this the idea of toasting, which is which
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Speaker 1: is less like a rap song, but still it's kind
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Speaker 1: of like a dis track. Anyway, over time, these mcs
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Speaker 1: would later become known as rappers. They would they would
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Speaker 1: talk in rhythm like you said, and they would begin
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Speaker 1: to rhyme, and then they would also they were already
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Speaker 1: talking on rhythm in sync with music, and they started
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Speaker 1: throwing in rhymes with this rhyme schemes. Initially, people dismissed
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Speaker 1: this as a fad. Even people as close as Manhattan
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Speaker 1: dismissed it as a fad. But in nineteen seventy nine
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Speaker 1: everything changed because the Sugarhill Gang came out with rappers
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Speaker 1: the light and people started to pay attention. We also
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Speaker 1: see we've got to shout out DJ Grand Wizard Theodore,
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Speaker 1: who has said to have accidentally invented the method of scratching.
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Speaker 1: There's a great quest love drunk history about this, and
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Speaker 1: the scratching became enormously influential. Grand Master Flash other legends
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Speaker 1: quickly pick it up. This guy Wizard Theodore also pioneers
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Speaker 1: the use of the needle drop. That's where instead of
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Speaker 1: silently queuing up the next record in the rotation, the
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Speaker 1: DJ drops the needle on the exact beginning of the song.
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Speaker 3: Have you ever seen a really, really, really amazing DJ
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Speaker 3: perform It's like seeing a magician, or like an illusionist
16:54
Speaker 3: like it because they're you know, like for example, like
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Speaker 3: kid Koala is a really really really cool one, like
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Speaker 3: obviously a grandmaster Flash DJ Jazzy Jeff, you know, hell,
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Speaker 3: what's his name? DJ Collin. That guy's got serious turntable chops.
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Speaker 3: Like you don't really think of him like that. You
17:10
Speaker 3: think about more as like a producer. But I've seen
17:12
Speaker 3: some videos of him, but that needle drop technique, Like
17:15
Speaker 3: I saw a performance from a live performance from Kikuala once.
17:19
Speaker 3: He does this thing where he plays moon River on
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Speaker 3: like he has four turntables and he pitches the he
17:27
Speaker 3: changes the pitch the speed of the turntable with the
17:30
Speaker 3: slider it's on the turntable while moving the needle per
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Speaker 3: note like he'll pitch it up a semi tone and
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Speaker 3: then move it to another part of the thing. And
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Speaker 3: he's playing it like with the needle drops and it's seamless,
17:43
Speaker 3: and it's so magical to see that done with that
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Speaker 3: level of precision. This is where it begins. The idea
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Speaker 3: of this is not how you were supposed to use
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Speaker 3: a turntable. Your dad would yell at you for scratching
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Speaker 3: the record or dropping the needle like that this is
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Speaker 3: people using technology incorrectly and making it the new way
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Speaker 3: technology is used.
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Speaker 1: And I want to give a shout out to another
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Speaker 1: DJ that I think is amazing. Just DJ Baboo, one
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Speaker 1: third of Dilated Peoples out of the West Coast. He's
18:16
Speaker 1: super about fantastic. Yeah, I think they're props.
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Speaker 3: I think they're excellent, and then people don't talk about
18:21
Speaker 3: them as much as they should.
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Speaker 2: I'm so glad to hear you mentioned them. They're so cool.
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Speaker 1: Well, if we start naming all the all the DJs
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Speaker 1: we love, we've got a different episode. But this is
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Speaker 1: you could tell we're fans of this. I grew up
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Speaker 1: in this, like we we love this stuff. Okay, it's
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Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties, sometimes called the golden age of
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Speaker 1: hip hop. Now, this is where run DMC comes from.
18:42
Speaker 1: This is where rock keem comes from. They're pushing the boundaries.
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Speaker 1: This art form, it's important to note, is always continually evolving.
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Speaker 1: And I love I love that we're pointing out it
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Speaker 1: was wholesome in the beginning, very much so, and it
18:58
Speaker 1: was a new genre of music. It would spread past
19:01
Speaker 1: the bounds of the Big Apple, it would touch every.
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Speaker 2: Corner of the globe.
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Speaker 1: And now new generations musicians all across the world put
19:09
Speaker 1: their spin on it. It is one part of a
19:12
Speaker 1: larger culture, you know, including graffiti, including the breaks a
19:16
Speaker 1: break dancing rather the bee Boys, And unfortunately, as it's growing,
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Speaker 1: it comes with some growing pains.
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Speaker 2: Not everybody likes it. And Noel, we can't talk.
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Speaker 1: About the growth of rap and hip hop without talking
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Speaker 1: about the dawn of gangster rap.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's true because you know, to your point,
19:36
Speaker 3: been especially mentioning like Rakim and run DMC. I mean
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Speaker 3: like early rap or hip hop, Like if you listen
19:42
Speaker 3: think about gang rappers of July, it is all kind
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Speaker 3: of this up dup dup dup dat up do dub
19:48
Speaker 3: dub dada. It's a little goofy and it sounds a
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Speaker 3: little dated now. I mean it's important in some of
19:53
Speaker 3: that stuff. There's some really clever wordplay, but it's a
19:56
Speaker 3: little like it's about partying and not even like it's
19:59
Speaker 3: not having a good tis right to a little bit
20:03
Speaker 3: of bravado, you know, but nothing very like substantive, nothing
20:08
Speaker 3: like ra Kim and Rehn DMC start to push that
20:10
Speaker 3: in a different direction, like rare Kim in particular, really
20:13
Speaker 3: sort of elevated the like cadences of rap, and they
20:16
Speaker 3: started making the rhythm of the of the delivery much
20:19
Speaker 3: more complex. But then when you get gangster rapp, you
20:22
Speaker 3: really start to see young people from like South central
20:27
Speaker 3: Los Angeles for example, where there's a lot of crime,
20:30
Speaker 3: a lot of gang activity, a lot of drug dealing
20:33
Speaker 3: and violence using this platform to talk about their lives.
20:38
Speaker 2: And you know, sort of a chicken or the egg
20:40
Speaker 2: type question, you gotta wonder.
20:41
Speaker 3: Like, did they see the commercial value in this or
20:44
Speaker 3: were they just being entirely confessional like or was it
20:47
Speaker 3: some combination of both, because to me, it seems more
20:50
Speaker 3: like it was the record executives that saw the commercial
20:53
Speaker 3: potential and it was more like these guys were more
20:56
Speaker 3: like young punks kind of just doing their thing.
20:58
Speaker 2: But I don't know, maybe I'm being naive. No, it's
21:00
Speaker 2: very rock and roll.
21:01
Speaker 1: There is a very punk aesthetic to it because they're
21:04
Speaker 1: telling the truth. They paint in the mid nineteen eighties,
21:08
Speaker 1: so while it's the mainstream golden age of hip hop,
21:10
Speaker 1: gangster rap is evolving. And there were yeah, earlier songs
21:16
Speaker 1: were fun, they're about partying and dancing. Gangst rap has
21:19
Speaker 1: this violent dystopian picture of a society gone wrong. You know,
21:23
Speaker 1: crime is a career, gangs are a necessity, violence.
21:27
Speaker 2: Is a way of life.
21:28
Speaker 1: And there's an episode we did for Stuff they Don't
21:32
Speaker 1: Want You to Know, which talks about the conspiracy theory
21:35
Speaker 1: that music executives continually try to monetize violent rap and
21:42
Speaker 1: some sort of mastermind way of manipulating society that hasn't
21:48
Speaker 1: been conclusively proven.
21:50
Speaker 2: Do you check out that episode?
21:51
Speaker 1: What you need to what we need to know here
21:53
Speaker 1: is that these these young guys, they're very young guys
21:57
Speaker 1: this time.
21:59
Speaker 2: They are.
22:01
Speaker 1: Maybe out to make a little bit of money, but
22:04
Speaker 1: in the beginning, it's just cool to do something creative.
22:08
Speaker 1: By the way, this is we should give people their
22:10
Speaker 1: props to their flowers. Schooly D of Philadelphia is one
22:15
Speaker 1: of the first gangster rappers to come to prominence in
22:19
Speaker 1: eighty five, with songs like PSK what does it mean?
22:23
Speaker 2: What does it mean? Ben?
22:25
Speaker 1: Yes, Well it's kind of long. If you look at
22:29
Speaker 1: the lyrics. P for the people who can't understand how
22:32
Speaker 1: one homeboy became a man? As for the way we
22:35
Speaker 1: scream and shout one by one, I'm knocking you out,
22:38
Speaker 1: K for the way my DJ's cutting, other mcs ain't
22:42
Speaker 1: saying nothing.
22:42
Speaker 2: I think there's a typo in there. Cutting. It starts
22:45
Speaker 2: with a C. That's called styling. That's what that's called. Again.
22:49
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
22:49
Speaker 3: Look, you talk about graffiti culture like, you know, all
22:52
Speaker 3: of this stuff like lingo or you know, like slang,
22:55
Speaker 3: all of the things of this culture contributed to pop culture.
23:00
Speaker 3: It's it's immeasurable. It's insane, you know. I mean, there's
23:03
Speaker 3: so much stuff wrapped into hip hop. It's about so
23:06
Speaker 3: much more than just the music. It's really really, really
23:08
Speaker 3: really interesting. But you're right, Ben, I think it's important
23:11
Speaker 3: to mention that, you know, the Schoolly D was from Philly,
23:14
Speaker 3: but this period really did shift kind of the focus
23:17
Speaker 3: of hip hop squarely to the West Coast one hundred percent.
23:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, So shout out to KRS one when Criminal Minded,
23:25
Speaker 1: shout out to the ghetto boys in Houston, Texas. Now
23:28
Speaker 1: we have to get to the big group in w
23:33
Speaker 1: A in WA stands for blank with an attitude. So
23:45
Speaker 1: we're not gonna we're not gonna use the word ourselves.
23:47
Speaker 1: We don't have the qualifications to do. So they come
23:50
Speaker 1: out with this album called Straight Out of Compton, and
23:53
Speaker 1: like you said, it shifts the sort of geographical center
23:57
Speaker 1: of hip hop culture. And they're very playing about how
24:02
Speaker 1: violent life is in the streets of South central LA
24:05
Speaker 1: and in Compton, and there's hyperrealism there, but there's also
24:09
Speaker 1: a lot of myth, a lot of bravado declarations of immortality,
24:14
Speaker 1: and this exaggeration, critics would later argue, becomes a kind
24:18
Speaker 1: of self protective, delusional device for listeners who are actually
24:22
Speaker 1: involved in this incredibly dangerous lifestyle. In WA is chronically
24:27
Speaker 1: and we're getting we're getting that take from an excellent
24:31
Speaker 1: article on BBC by Rebecca Lawrence called n WA the
24:36
Speaker 1: World's most dangerous group.
24:39
Speaker 3: Question mark, question mark. That's the funny thing about this, right,
24:42
Speaker 3: the idea of dangerous. You know, like we know that
24:45
Speaker 3: people did get murdered, do get murdered, I mean in
24:48
Speaker 3: in South central Laws and all kinds of all pockets
24:52
Speaker 3: of the United States.
24:53
Speaker 2: You know, it's a thing.
24:54
Speaker 3: Violence is an American you know tradition, I mean only
25:00
Speaker 3: in other parts of the world too. But like we know,
25:01
Speaker 3: gun violence has showed no signs of slowing. If anything,
25:05
Speaker 3: it's just kind of worse than it's ever been. And
25:07
Speaker 3: there are other countries that just don't experience that in
25:09
Speaker 3: the same way. So it makes sense that this, you know,
25:11
Speaker 3: culture of music that came out kind of mimiced that
25:15
Speaker 3: culture of violence. Not mimic, but the very least was
25:18
Speaker 3: a mirror kind of being held up to it. And
25:20
Speaker 3: you're right, Ben about the exaggeration of Bravada, but that's
25:23
Speaker 3: just part of the swagger of being an MC. You
25:26
Speaker 3: know what as at heart of these lyrics is real.
25:30
Speaker 3: These people were getting killed and the police were not
25:33
Speaker 3: to be trusted.
25:34
Speaker 1: Right, I would say there's also you know, with the
25:37
Speaker 1: with this history of violence, we're specifically talking about the
25:40
Speaker 1: history of state sponsored violence against minorities, and these folks
25:45
Speaker 1: were not lying about the problems in LA. At the time,
25:50
Speaker 1: recession de industrialization had led to these huge job losses.
25:54
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty three, youth employment there was nearly fifty percent.
26:00
Speaker 1: Almost one out of every two people didn't have a
26:03
Speaker 1: job and would have a very hard time trying to
26:05
Speaker 1: find one. Hundreds of rival gangs sprung up, the most
26:09
Speaker 1: notorious or well known in mainstream culture being the Crips
26:12
Speaker 1: and the Bloods, But they are just the two most
26:15
Speaker 1: well known crack cocaine epidemic, the police are increasingly militarized
26:21
Speaker 1: in WA, both as a group and in their solo albums. Later,
26:24
Speaker 1: they shake up America, they reclaim the inWORD. This becomes
26:28
Speaker 1: a huge matter of public debate, right and ice Cube
26:33
Speaker 1: makes this argument. He says, look, we're turning this into
26:37
Speaker 1: a positive appellation. You know, we are owning this. Now
26:41
Speaker 1: it's our We're taking the word back. And of course
26:45
Speaker 1: there was a very hefty side of misogyny in the lyrics,
26:49
Speaker 1: but hey, it's nothing but music, right. America is the
26:53
Speaker 1: land of free speech and theory, and a lot of
26:55
Speaker 1: people way before NWA said a lot of much more hurtful,
26:59
Speaker 1: much more violent things, for instance, country music, which for
27:04
Speaker 1: some reason always gets a pass in the modern day.
27:07
Speaker 1: But to some members of America's power structure, these young
27:11
Speaker 1: men were a rise of the historic underclass. The FBI
27:15
Speaker 1: felt threatened, and things came to a head when n
27:19
Speaker 1: WA released perhaps the most well known song, max, I
27:23
Speaker 1: guess we should bleep it fuck the police beep.
27:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that's what we're talking about here.
27:30
Speaker 3: And again at the top, we sort of both were just,
27:34
Speaker 3: you know, thinking about how a lot of these lyrics
27:37
Speaker 3: now are just so comparatively tame compared to other things
27:41
Speaker 3: that have come after that, you know, the level of
27:44
Speaker 3: depravity in some more modern music, you know, whether it
27:49
Speaker 3: be metal, death metal, or some forms of hip hop.
27:52
Speaker 3: But I mean, when you're saying this, this is like
27:54
Speaker 3: an anthem, you know, this is like a slogan the police,
27:59
Speaker 3: you know, and it's it's now more than ever incredibly important.
28:03
Speaker 3: And again I'm not saying I know there's some good
28:07
Speaker 3: police out there that are out there to do a
28:09
Speaker 3: good job to help people. But in America we are
28:12
Speaker 3: kind of in an epidemic of police violence, and with
28:15
Speaker 3: things like you know, cop City here in Atlanta and
28:18
Speaker 3: all of the public outcries just because there's just no
28:21
Speaker 3: trust for the police, you know, with slayings of minorities
28:26
Speaker 3: just being broadcast left and right, and you hear about
28:28
Speaker 3: a new one, you know, on the regular. This was
28:31
Speaker 3: very much opprescient song and is not It's not just shock,
28:39
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's real. It's a real sentiment of
28:42
Speaker 3: people being scared. I mean, Ice Cube would later say
28:45
Speaker 3: in interviews that, you know, if people in his community
28:47
Speaker 3: were in trouble, the police were the last people they
28:50
Speaker 3: would call, Oh yeah, it wasn't a racist sentiment. It
28:53
Speaker 3: wasn't like because they're white or whatever. A lot of
28:55
Speaker 3: these people weren't white. A lot of these cops. It
28:57
Speaker 3: has something to do with race. It just has to
28:59
Speaker 3: do with the systematic violence towards minorities and the way
29:03
Speaker 3: those communities are police and the fact that you'd be
29:05
Speaker 3: more likely to get in trouble or to get robbed
29:07
Speaker 3: by the police than just keeping it within your own community.
29:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you can make an argument that
29:13
Speaker 1: a lot of people had a problem with this song.
29:16
Speaker 1: Didn't get past the part where they say, again, fuck
29:20
Speaker 1: the police. They didn't pay attention to lyrics that say
29:22
Speaker 1: things like fucking with me because I'm a teenager with
29:26
Speaker 1: a little bit of golden paper, searching for my car,
29:28
Speaker 1: looking for the product, thinking every is selling narcotics, you
29:32
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like they're talking about profiling, they're
29:35
Speaker 1: talking about racism, state sponsored violence. They're not just they're
29:40
Speaker 1: not just like, eh, you know, south Park style. They're
29:44
Speaker 1: making a point here. And this did not get radio airplay,
29:48
Speaker 1: of course, it did not get promotion for the label initially.
29:52
Speaker 1: Despite all that, in six weeks straight out at Compton
29:55
Speaker 1: goes gold, eventually it goes double platinum. It's crossing over
30:00
Speaker 1: or into mainstream wide American culture because just like rock music, right,
30:05
Speaker 1: just like punk music, people like to hear someone fighting
30:09
Speaker 1: the power, and that provoked concern among the US establishment
30:13
Speaker 1: parent groups. The religious right eventually caught the attention to
30:16
Speaker 1: law enforcement because you know, they're in the song.
30:20
Speaker 2: Of course they are.
30:20
Speaker 3: They're they're targeted, and essentially, you know, whatever it's, it's
30:24
Speaker 3: it's a philosophical targeting. No one is advocating in this song.
30:28
Speaker 3: There is another song that'll come a little later from
30:30
Speaker 3: a solo effort from one of the members of NWA,
30:33
Speaker 3: but there's no advocation in the song for like let's
30:35
Speaker 3: go kill cops.
30:36
Speaker 2: That's not what it's about.
30:37
Speaker 3: It. It's it's expressing a very real, you know, situation
30:41
Speaker 3: that occurs, you know, all the time in these neighborhoods
30:44
Speaker 3: that they're living in. But you know, you mentioned where
30:47
Speaker 3: we're going with the connection to law enforcement and them
30:50
Speaker 3: kind of entering the scene. This is no different than
30:53
Speaker 3: j Edgar Hoover targeting John Lennon.
30:56
Speaker 2: Or Mick Jagger.
30:57
Speaker 3: You know, they were scared of people with control over
31:02
Speaker 3: voting blocks, you know, over like the youth movements, and
31:06
Speaker 3: to them, this wasn't just entertainment, this was influence. This
31:10
Speaker 3: was dangerous, yeah, exactly. And they they saw this as
31:15
Speaker 3: a threat to society as they understood it. And that's why,
31:21
Speaker 3: out of all the problems they dealt with on a
31:23
Speaker 3: daily basis, the drug trade, trafficking, murder, domestic terrorism, the
31:29
Speaker 3: Federal Bureau of Investigation said, let's put that stuff on
31:33
Speaker 3: hold for a second. We need to take out gangster
31:35
Speaker 3: rap and these NWA kids in particular, this was a
31:40
Speaker 3: moral panic. And Britannica defines moral panic as I mean,
31:44
Speaker 3: you nailed the definition pretty much earlier. It's it's a
31:48
Speaker 3: phrase used in sociology to describe an artificially created panic
31:53
Speaker 3: or scare.
31:53
Speaker 2: They're cyclical.
31:55
Speaker 1: Researchers demonstrate that what they call more entrepreneurs demonize dangerous
32:03
Speaker 1: groups to serve their own self motivated or self interested ends.
32:08
Speaker 1: And although the specifics and moral panics vary throughout history,
32:12
Speaker 1: usually they are initiated by the very powerful to manage
32:16
Speaker 1: the body and behavior of the poor and the power less.
32:21
Speaker 3: And oftentimes the folks who initiate it haven't even done
32:24
Speaker 3: their homework, Like like don't even know what they're talking
32:27
Speaker 3: about in terms of what the lyrics are referring to.
32:30
Speaker 3: They get hung up on a word or a concept
32:33
Speaker 3: or something like that, and like like but they haven't
32:35
Speaker 3: even really listened to the record or they really can't
32:38
Speaker 3: possibly wrap their head around the cultural significance of what
32:42
Speaker 3: it represents. They're just saying, no, these these you know,
32:47
Speaker 3: gangsters are coming for our children, you know, and then
32:49
Speaker 3: they're trying to influence them and make them join gangs, and.
32:53
Speaker 2: You know, it's absurd.
32:55
Speaker 3: I mean, certainly, maybe there was one kid who like
32:58
Speaker 3: got into gun violence because he listened to a record,
33:00
Speaker 3: but by and large, I don't think that's how that works,
33:04
Speaker 3: you know, Like I just don't same with the Marilyn
33:06
Speaker 3: Manson stuff and the what was that the.
33:10
Speaker 2: Texas case with the with the.
33:12
Speaker 3: Kids who were listening to the Marilyn Manson and death
33:15
Speaker 3: metal who got accused of those child murders at robin
33:17
Speaker 3: Hood Hills. What is that called the Memphis West Memphis
33:20
Speaker 3: three I believe is what that one's called.
33:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, we well we also know that they we also
33:27
Speaker 1: know that this moral panic was a bipartisan panic. And
33:32
Speaker 1: first off, when I say cyclical, let us assure you
33:35
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised if centuries ago some new
33:39
Speaker 1: form of chanting and canticles came out and there was
33:43
Speaker 1: some guys like I only like Gregorian chant. It happens
33:48
Speaker 1: whatever the new stuff comes through, right, That's why, like
33:51
Speaker 1: people I'm sure were scared of of each boys, they're
33:53
Speaker 1: scared of Elvis, even though he appropriated music that have
33:56
Speaker 1: been along around for so long.
33:58
Speaker 2: Anyways, people were probably scared of Rance.
34:00
Speaker 3: Well at the time, you know what I mean, anything
34:02
Speaker 3: that now just seems so mickey mouse. There was a
34:05
Speaker 3: time where if it wasn't classical music, it was somehow offensive,
34:09
Speaker 3: and even classical music at times, like you know, Stravinsky
34:13
Speaker 3: was punk rock and would cause these outrages of people,
34:16
Speaker 3: you know, getting into these sort of reveries that like
34:20
Speaker 3: these concerts where people were like screaming and throwing things
34:22
Speaker 3: because it was just so bombastic.
34:24
Speaker 1: The saxophone was punk rock. Punk rock is a mentality,
34:28
Speaker 1: and NWA is punk rock for sure, which is why
34:32
Speaker 1: you see later M season producers from NWA hanging out
34:37
Speaker 1: with rock and roll stuff. We don't want to spoke
34:40
Speaker 1: too much yet, but okay, so it's bipartisan, right. The
34:44
Speaker 1: people who are mad at NWA. There's a group called
34:48
Speaker 1: the Parents Music Resource Center, founded in nineteen eighty five
34:53
Speaker 1: entirely because some powerful people in Washington are worried about
34:58
Speaker 1: what their kids are listening to. The way the story
35:00
Speaker 1: goes is Tipper Gore, when you hear of most often,
35:05
Speaker 1: she was the wife of Al Gore, who was the
35:09
Speaker 1: Senator of Tennessee at the time, and she bought an
35:12
Speaker 1: album called Purple Rain by Prince Legendary for her daughter,
35:18
Speaker 1: who was eleven at the time. And as Tipper is
35:22
Speaker 1: listening to these songs on the album, she finds that
35:25
Speaker 1: one of them, darling Nicky, has a reference to masturbation,
35:30
Speaker 1: to female masturbation.
35:31
Speaker 3: Once again, though you're buying your eleven year old a
35:35
Speaker 3: Prince album. Have you've not seen his earlier work, like
35:38
Speaker 3: Dirty Minds and stuff?
35:39
Speaker 2: I mean, like, wasn't that before Purple Rain?
35:42
Speaker 3: I mean, like he's always been this like sexual kind
35:46
Speaker 3: of figure. Dynamo Yeah no, yeah, freaking Dirty Mind came
35:52
Speaker 3: out in nineteen eighty and the cover is him wearing
35:56
Speaker 3: like a like with a happy trail coming out of
35:58
Speaker 3: his like g string you know, I mean, is you know,
36:01
Speaker 3: there's it's no question what is going on.
36:03
Speaker 2: With this guy?
36:04
Speaker 3: So you're like, oh, purple Rain, Well that sounds fun.
36:07
Speaker 3: I bet my eleven year old like that. Give me
36:10
Speaker 3: a break, you know, And then then all of a sudden,
36:12
Speaker 3: the pm r C becomes a thing. Ben, do you
36:15
Speaker 3: remember the first CD you had that maybe you had
36:18
Speaker 3: to smuggle or have a friend sneak to you or whatever,
36:20
Speaker 3: that had that fricking parental advisory explicit lyrics sticker on it.
36:26
Speaker 1: They invented this, Yeah, that's right. Do you remember Green
36:30
Speaker 1: Day Dookie?
36:31
Speaker 3: That's crazy and that I would I don't even I
36:33
Speaker 3: think there may well have been versions of that that
36:36
Speaker 3: didn't have it.
36:36
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because they would they would sell the clean versions,
36:40
Speaker 1: but nobody nobody wanted the clean versions.
36:42
Speaker 2: Maybe I just can't quite remember.
36:44
Speaker 3: I guess there's they used the F word maybe one
36:47
Speaker 3: one song on that record. And there's also a hidden
36:49
Speaker 3: track that's apparently about masturbation that I didn't believe that
36:52
Speaker 3: for years, but then I hear it now.
36:53
Speaker 2: Of course. That's what it's about.
36:55
Speaker 3: My point though, is there was very hazy criteria even
36:59
Speaker 3: for what into like an album deserving one of these stickers,
37:02
Speaker 3: you know, And sometimes they would be stickers, actual stickers
37:06
Speaker 3: placed on it, and sometimes they would be embedded in
37:08
Speaker 3: the art, the actual art of and it's all very hazy,
37:11
Speaker 3: sort of like at least with ratings for movies you
37:14
Speaker 3: kind of know, like a PG thirteen movie.
37:16
Speaker 2: I think can say the F word one time.
37:18
Speaker 3: There's very hazy still, but not nearly as hazy as this.
37:22
Speaker 3: The first one I ever had was Black Sunday by
37:26
Speaker 3: Cypress Hill, and it was kind of slipped to me
37:29
Speaker 3: by a friend and youth group.
37:31
Speaker 2: And if you all remember the cover of that album,
37:33
Speaker 2: it looks like a death metal album cover.
37:35
Speaker 3: It's like like just like piles of the graveyard stones
37:40
Speaker 3: and skulls and stuff, and there's a lot of black
37:43
Speaker 3: on it.
37:43
Speaker 2: And my friend very cleverly scribbled over the parental advisory
37:47
Speaker 2: part with a black sharpie and you couldn't see it.
37:51
Speaker 2: It was genius.
37:51
Speaker 3: I wish I still had that such a relic for
37:53
Speaker 3: my childhood. But if anything, though, it gave records that
37:58
Speaker 3: had that sticker on it a sense of danger and
38:01
Speaker 3: like this is what you want, kids, This is the
38:04
Speaker 3: good stuff.
38:05
Speaker 1: And that comes into play a little later for sure. Yeah,
38:08
Speaker 1: like The point is, two years before NWA is even
38:11
Speaker 1: a thing, they become active in nineteen eighty seven, two
38:14
Speaker 1: years before they become a thing, there's already a powerful
38:17
Speaker 1: group formed to clutch their pearls and panic not just
38:21
Speaker 1: about NWA, but about all music they find objectionable. In
38:25
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, FBI assistant director Mitt Erlich sends out
38:32
Speaker 1: a letter to the NWA distributor and says the album,
38:37
Speaker 1: straight out of Compton quote, encourages violence against and disrespect
38:42
Speaker 1: for the law enforcement officer, and also says you could
38:45
Speaker 1: read the whole letter. He also says he speaks for
38:48
Speaker 1: all law enforcement to be fair. He says he just
38:52
Speaker 1: wants to bring this matter to the attention of the
38:54
Speaker 1: record company priority. But that does feel like a threat
39:00
Speaker 1: when Shackbi writes to.
39:02
Speaker 3: You, right, it's the implication if something happened to your
39:05
Speaker 3: little hip hop concerts, you know what I mean. And
39:09
Speaker 3: so there are some concerts and tours that get affected.
39:14
Speaker 2: In eighty nine, and WA's touring America.
39:18
Speaker 3: And they police are urged by this faction, you know,
39:24
Speaker 3: to interfere with their concerts.
39:27
Speaker 1: The fax each other information about it.
39:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, factions be factions, and so in Detroit. Actually the
39:34
Speaker 3: band is even arrested, you know. I mean, this is
39:38
Speaker 3: very very interesting parallels to not to plug again, but
39:42
Speaker 3: to the Stones seventy two tour, where they're arrested. They're
39:46
Speaker 3: treated as this counterculture kind of like bell Weather, you know,
39:49
Speaker 3: and this is very similar to this band from Compton,
39:55
Speaker 3: which to some parts of the country may as well
39:57
Speaker 3: have been the Moon, you know what I mean. It
39:59
Speaker 3: was just like so alien and weird that it happened
40:02
Speaker 3: in Detroit, because that's if I think of that as
40:04
Speaker 3: much more of like a kind of you know, hip
40:06
Speaker 3: hop centric and like kind of culturally progressive city.
40:10
Speaker 2: But I guess that doesn't have anything to do with
40:12
Speaker 2: the police, you know.
40:13
Speaker 1: No. Yeah, the idea too that the FBI was monitoring
40:17
Speaker 1: the individual's inn wa ice Cube, who we pulled a
40:21
Speaker 1: lot of interviews from. He had an interview with Billboard
40:24
Speaker 1: much much later when he said, look, we were just
40:26
Speaker 1: locals in Los Angeles. We went from being these kids
40:31
Speaker 1: to tangling with the biggest power entities out there. There
40:35
Speaker 1: were all kinds of forces against us, but it didn't
40:38
Speaker 1: make us bite our tongue. It made us stand up
40:41
Speaker 1: even more. We should also know this is the very
40:43
Speaker 1: first time in FBI history that they had ever done
40:46
Speaker 1: anything like this for a musical album of any sort.
40:50
Speaker 1: Excerpts from the letter are Excerpts from the letter give
40:55
Speaker 1: a lot of statistics. They say things like, violent crime
40:59
Speaker 1: is a problem, is reached it unprecedented high in nineteen
41:03
Speaker 1: eighty eight. They talk about the seventy eight law enforcement
41:08
Speaker 1: officers that were murdered in eighty eight and four more
41:11
Speaker 1: in eighty seven. But they don't give the other sides
41:15
Speaker 1: of the facts. They don't or you know, they don't
41:17
Speaker 1: give other contextual clues, like the number of black men
41:21
Speaker 1: who had died in police custody during those same years.
41:25
Speaker 2: They say.
41:27
Speaker 1: They conclude by saying music plays a significant role in society.
41:31
Speaker 1: And the director said, and the assistant director says, I
41:35
Speaker 1: wanted you to be aware of the FBI's position relative
41:38
Speaker 1: to this song and its message. I believe my views
41:40
Speaker 1: reflect the opinion of the entire law enforcement community. And
41:44
Speaker 1: what did NWA do. They played the song everywhere they went,
41:49
Speaker 1: every show, every appearance, no matter the protest, no matter
41:52
Speaker 1: the police presence.
41:53
Speaker 2: It's amazing. It's so punk rock. I mean, it reminds
41:56
Speaker 2: me of like there's a lot of you.
41:58
Speaker 3: Can find clips of like all of the artists that
42:00
Speaker 3: were banned from ever performing on Saturday Night Live again,
42:03
Speaker 3: and it's usually because they did something politically divisive, you know,
42:06
Speaker 3: like rest in Peace Shinead O'Connor by the way, who
42:09
Speaker 3: who passed away recently. But famous clip of her ripping
42:12
Speaker 3: up a picture of the Pope on SNL. You know,
42:15
Speaker 3: she really was pilloried for that, but then later it
42:17
Speaker 3: turned out, yeah, the Catholic Church was doing some really
42:20
Speaker 3: awful stuff that she was protesting.
42:21
Speaker 2: But Elvis Costello got banned.
42:24
Speaker 3: I think it may have been rescinded because he was
42:26
Speaker 3: asked not to play his song Radio Radio, which is
42:30
Speaker 3: about the record industry and how like twisted and corrupt
42:33
Speaker 3: the record industry is. And so that was like literally,
42:36
Speaker 3: you know, representatives from the media saying, hey, don't put
42:40
Speaker 3: poke your finger in the eye of our buddies, the
42:42
Speaker 3: record industry, you know, and he said, okay, okay, and
42:45
Speaker 3: then he did it anyway, and then it got it
42:47
Speaker 3: got him in trouble.
42:48
Speaker 1: The rage against the machine for another Saturday Live example.
42:51
Speaker 3: That's right with the flag maybe had something to doing
42:53
Speaker 3: upside down flag, the American flag.
42:56
Speaker 2: That's I'm reading the article right now. No, that's cool, man.
42:59
Speaker 3: This stuff is inherently punk rock, you know, speaking truth
43:02
Speaker 3: to power. We haven't talked about Public Enemy much yet,
43:04
Speaker 3: but their song fight the Power in nineteen eighty nine
43:07
Speaker 3: another excellent just kind of you know, anthem for this
43:11
Speaker 3: kind of anti establishment stuff. And it really is a
43:14
Speaker 3: carryover from like attitudes of like rock and roll bands,
43:17
Speaker 3: you know, from the sixties and seventies, the late sixties
43:20
Speaker 3: and early seventies.
43:21
Speaker 2: It's really interesting and so this.
43:24
Speaker 1: Is a scary time, but these guys have the grit
43:28
Speaker 1: to not bow, to not bend, and not break. And
43:32
Speaker 1: the FBI letter is probably one of the best things
43:37
Speaker 1: that ever happened to n WA's career because the wrong Yeah,
43:41
Speaker 1: the marketing geniuses at the record label, they say, you
43:44
Speaker 1: know what, we're going public. They send this letter to
43:47
Speaker 1: the press, it's part of their press kit. There's this
43:49
Speaker 1: whole new interest in Compton in general. It also was
43:53
Speaker 1: a tremendous help that Tipper Gores group Parrot Music Resource
43:58
Speaker 1: Center did call in the world's most Dangerous group and
44:04
Speaker 1: they let This all led to the creation of that
44:07
Speaker 1: explicit printal advisory label. Basically, we're looking at the Streisand
44:12
Speaker 1: effect because the power structure tried to tell everybody not
44:16
Speaker 1: to listen to in Wa, everybody listened to NWA.
44:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the old joke about like if the
44:23
Speaker 3: bottle of pills says, don't operate heavy machinery while taking it,
44:27
Speaker 3: then those are the ones that are the fun pills.
44:30
Speaker 3: I've heard from comedians that that's the case. But yeah,
44:33
Speaker 3: I love your use of the Streisand effect. Barbara Streisand
44:37
Speaker 3: famously tried to get images of herself that were unflattering
44:40
Speaker 3: shricken from the Internet, and just the very fact that
44:43
Speaker 3: she wanted this to happen made the Internet just spread them.
44:47
Speaker 2: Further and wider than ever would have been the case
44:49
Speaker 2: if she had just shut up about it. Yeah.
44:51
Speaker 1: I think it was pictures of her house. She asked
44:54
Speaker 1: people not to put pictures of her house off, and
44:56
Speaker 1: then Beyonce encountered the Streisand effect by asking people to
44:59
Speaker 1: take of lattering pictures. The thing is if something if
45:03
Speaker 1: something like that happens. Yeah, like you said so beautifully, man,
45:06
Speaker 1: people people aren't gonna comply when you tell them that
45:11
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, especially if you're talking about you're the
45:15
Speaker 1: person in the crowd saying, Okay, I know we've all
45:17
Speaker 1: had fun, but let's calm down because it's almost seven
45:20
Speaker 1: point thirty and fellow hip hop fans of the audience,
45:24
Speaker 1: you know, there is so much more that we didn't
45:26
Speaker 1: get to today, but we wanted to end here with
45:31
Speaker 1: our big, big thanks to all the legends of this
45:34
Speaker 1: genre of hip hop and rap. We found one note
45:37
Speaker 1: that we thought would just be the perfect.
45:39
Speaker 2: One to end on.
45:40
Speaker 1: What happened to that letter from the FBI, you may
45:43
Speaker 1: ask today. It is in the rock and Roll Hall
45:46
Speaker 1: of Fame, of which NWA is.
45:47
Speaker 3: A member, and in a lot of hay has been
45:50
Speaker 3: made by certain types. I guess that's not rock and roll.
45:55
Speaker 3: Screw that, it totally is.
45:58
Speaker 2: Whatever.
45:59
Speaker 3: Rock and roll is an a MorphOS concept, like you said,
46:01
Speaker 3: just like punk rock. It doesn't refer to a sound,
46:03
Speaker 3: It refers to like an attitude and a mentality. And like,
46:07
Speaker 3: this is so important, you know the fact that they
46:09
Speaker 3: took this strongly worded letter from the FBI and made
46:12
Speaker 3: it spun it into marketing.
46:14
Speaker 2: Gold because it just shows how.
46:16
Speaker 3: Square the FBI was, And again, like we said at
46:19
Speaker 3: the top of the show, how quaint it feels now
46:23
Speaker 3: the thought of the FBI expending any amount.
46:25
Speaker 2: Of resource on this kind of witch hunt, you know, And.
46:29
Speaker 3: I don't know, Ben, do you think Tipper Gore and
46:31
Speaker 3: her ilk meant well or do you think they were
46:35
Speaker 3: just trying to shut down poor people?
46:38
Speaker 1: I think I think it was probably a half and
46:42
Speaker 1: half thing. Those are not mutually exclusive motives. People usually,
46:47
Speaker 1: even people we consider villains, usually see themselves as heroes
46:50
Speaker 1: and think they're doing the right thing. And that's not
46:52
Speaker 1: say they're bad people, but they could have. There was
46:56
Speaker 1: a political calculation, doubtlessly, because you want to cause you
47:00
Speaker 1: and rally or base around, and in this case, their
47:02
Speaker 1: cause was misdirected. It did not work out, It did
47:06
Speaker 1: not address the problems from which this music arose. And
47:10
Speaker 1: with that, I say we we first, we give our
47:13
Speaker 1: we give our thanks of course to doctor dre Ice Cube,
47:17
Speaker 1: DJ Yella mc redden and Easy of n W A
47:22
Speaker 1: thank you for making this episode possible.
47:24
Speaker 3: And thanks to all the incredible artists that have come
47:26
Speaker 3: out of hip hop, all of the contributions that you've
47:29
Speaker 3: made to pop culture, to social justice, you know, to
47:35
Speaker 3: so many aspects that are very very positive, you know,
47:38
Speaker 3: in American society and global society. I mean, you know,
47:41
Speaker 3: because hip hop isn't just We're sitting here in Atlanta,
47:44
Speaker 3: which is like kind of a hotbed of hip hop,
47:46
Speaker 3: you know, with outcasts and so many incredible artists that
47:50
Speaker 3: have come yeah exactly that have come out of this city.
47:53
Speaker 3: But hip hop is a global phenomenon at this point.
47:56
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's not just American. Everybody loves it,
47:59
Speaker 3: and it's something that just about anybody, even if that's
48:02
Speaker 3: not your background, Like in terms of the perspective that's
48:05
Speaker 3: being described, there's something that you can still take from it.
48:07
Speaker 3: There's wisdom, you know, the word play, just the just
48:12
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's wisdom. There really is so much
48:15
Speaker 3: of that in the lyrics of of truly great hip hop.
48:18
Speaker 1: And of course thank you to our our own DJ,
48:23
Speaker 1: our own doctor Dre, mister Max Williams, thanks to Jonathan
48:27
Speaker 1: Strickland who is kind of our fbi aka the quizt
48:31
Speaker 1: Orgar Hoover. Yeah, and thanks to who else Alex Williams
48:36
Speaker 1: composing this banging tracks, Jeff cot who uh who's on
48:41
Speaker 1: in person at the office the other way. Yeah, Yeah,
48:44
Speaker 1: Eve's always a pleasure. Maybe we can get her back
48:46
Speaker 1: on the show soon and big big thanks to of
48:50
Speaker 1: course christ Fossio.
48:51
Speaker 2: Just here in spirit.
48:53
Speaker 1: I guess Tipper Gore, who also made this episode.
48:57
Speaker 2: Would she ended up going on to do working on
49:00
Speaker 2: a new show with us?
49:02
Speaker 1: Oh cool, we're doing a new show with Eve's Jeff Cookee,
49:06
Speaker 1: not with Tipper Gore to mine.
49:08
Speaker 2: Got it? Okay, thank god, We'll see you next time.
49:11
Speaker 3: Box. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
49:21
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.