All language subtitles for Fight.the.Power.How.Hip.Hop.Changed.the.World.S01E02.1080p.HDTV.H264-DARKFLiX

This program me contains very strong
and discriminatory language

and scenes which some viewers may
find upsetting

ARCHIVE: Our distinguished leader, one of the
royal, outstanding people of this country,

Rev Jesse Louis Jackson.
CHEERING

I feel victory! Yes, sir.

There's a transition going on!

CROWD: Yeah!

From charity to parity.

From slave ship to championship.

Our time has come.

CHEERING

I remember everybody rallying
behind Jesse,

whether they liked him or not.

They said, "You know what? This is
the one that we're choosing.

"He's brand-new to America, but he
ain't new to us."

ARCHIVE: I rise to declare
my decision

to seek the nomination of the
Democratic Party

for the Presidency of
the United States of America.

The Rev Jackson showed us
a different way of thinking

about the social ills
and then speaking to them.

ARCHIVE: Part of our intention has
been this internal quest for equity.

Not just jobs.
One wants to share power,

not just positions.

Jesse Jackson was the hope that we
said, OK, we're on the same page,

we'd like to see this attempted.

That was the simmering attitude.

We're going to break down some
barriers.

Vanessa Williams winning
beauty pageants,

Bryant Gumbel being able to go from
sports into The Today Show,

Oprah being able to start
with news

and go on to her own show,

as well as the beginnings of
hip-hop.

Maybe there was a new
hope for something different.

But no matter how high that you rise
up financially or status-wise

in this society,
they, in 1980s language,

is still gon' treat and look to
you as a...

MUSIC: Fight The Power
by Public Enemy

# Get it, get, get, get, get it

# Get down
Come on and get down

# Get it, get, get, get, get it

# Get down
Come on and get down

# Get it, get, get, get, get it

# Get down
Come on and get down

# Fight the power!

# Yes, yes, yes, yes, y'all

# Uh!
Fight the power!

# Yes, yes, yes, yes, y'all

# Uh!
Fight the power!

# Yes, yes, yes, yes, y'all

# Uh!
Fight the power!

# Yes, yes, yes, yes, y'all

# Uh!
Fight the power!

# Yes, yes, yes, yes, y'all

# Uh!
Fight the power!

# Yes, yes, yes, yes, y'all

# Uh!
Fight the power!

# Yes, yes, yes, yes, y'all

# Uh!
Fight the power!

# Yes, yes

# We've got to fight
the powers that be! #

MUSIC: Cavern
by Liquid Liquid

One of the greatest periods
in history

is 1980s New York.

People forget, it was punk rock,

it was hip-hop,

it was Keith Haring, Andy Warhol,

Basquiat,

it was style, it was fashion,

anti-establishment.

"We're going to dress the way
we want!" and this and that.

We wanted to be free. We were tired
of being held down

and oppressed and abused,

so that was punk rock.

Now this thing called hip-hop is
coming up with the same spirit.

New York at that time, downtown,

you had to be in a band

cos that's how you got laid.

Even if you wanted to be a painter

or you wanted to be a film-maker
or an artist,

any kind of artist,
you still had to be in a band.

So that was de rigueur, right.

We went out clubbing every night.

Even though it was all about sex,
drugs and rock and roll,

it was also about connecting
to other artists.

That was our internet

and that was just downtown.

Uptown, there's a whole other thing
going on

which would later on be called
hip-hop.

Ancl it took people like myself

and Fab 5 Freddy

and Henry Chalfant

and Charlie Ah earn
bringing these artists downtown

to perform at our clubs downtown,

like my club and Negril
that I had with Kool Lady Blue.

We recognised each other.

We were post-punk. We understood

this it something you do
yourself.

You don't ask for adults
to give you a platform.

You make it happen on your own.

Hip-hop was part of the tapestry
of all the stuff that's going on.

It was still going through an
evolution from just party records.

You had Run-D.M.C.
using rock guitars,

then you had Whodini doing
more R&B, melodic.

So all these things are happening.

They're all speaking to each other.

MUSIC CONTINUES

I just remember this sense of
breadth.

There was a lot happening
in the early '80s

in terms of black pop culture

and its relationship to both the
white American audience

and the global audience.

ARCHIVE: The idea came to me from
watching a group of kids in Harlem,

in the South Bronx, who were
actually mixing all kinds of records

together and talking, singing
or hollering over the top,

and the whole thing there
they've termed hip-hop.

MUSIC: Hard Times
by Run-D.M.C.

When Run-D.M.C. exploded in 1983,

we started to see a huge white male
audience join in.

They felt something.

These were not people who wanted
to be black,

as they were criticised.

These are not people who didn't
understand the culture

and just wanted to be cool.

The majority of white kids
that I personally met,

they were questioning
the United States of America

during that time.

# Hard times
Spreading just like the flu

# Watch out, homeboy

# Don't let it catch you. #

When I came in to hip-hop,
I was totally captivated

by the greatness of this
emcee-deejay presentation thing.

# Hard times. #

I always listened to the live
performances of Grandmaster Flash,

Cold Crush Four,

Treacherous Three,

Funky Four Plus One,

Fantastic Five,

all of the real pioneers of hip-hop,

and I couldn't believe the type
of messages that they had in there.

You know, Melle would do a
freestyle,

but he would put something socially
politically conscious in there,

because he saw it as
a responsibility to inform,

educate...

...without losing identity.

# Hard times

# Are coming to your town

# So stay alert

# Don't let them get you down. #

Run-D.M.C. were black without
saying,

"We're black rappers for the black
struggle."

Hip-hop removed the labels
of the civil rights struggle.

# Hard times

# Got our pockets all in chains

# I tell you what, homeboy. #

We took elements that everybody
across the board could relate to

and pinpointed it from our struggle

without sounding
like we was complaining.

# Because I need that dollar
every day of the week

# Hard times. #

I felt an overwhelming sense
of pride.

Pride in Run-D.M.C.

I thought, "There go my older
brothers."

Before Run-D.M.C.,

there was a lot of showmanship,
a lot of pomp and circumstance.

The costumes and, you know,

those guys were showing up in front
of Studio 54 audiences

trying to convert them.

Run-D.M.C. showed up looking
like the B-boys and B-girls

on the corner and showing up
with our fashion.

# Hard times

# Can take you on a natural trip. #

That was righteous.

To see that representation,

that felt authentic.

REV RUN: You ain't gonna believe
this place.

DMC: Word?

REV RUN: I'm telling you. Come on,
you're going to bug.

SECURITY GUARD: Hey, this is a rock
and roll museum.

You guys don't belong in here.

ECHOING: Ha ha ha ha.

The 1980s was a discovery of white
America and the mainstream finding

out that, oh, black folks, not only
are they people, too,

but they damn sure are efficient
doing whatever they choose to do.

Moving into the 1980s, we're seeing
massive urban decay,

but at the same time as
you have that,

you have an expanding
African-American middle class.

The black middle class grows
from the late 1960s

through the early 1980s.

That is a reflection of the real,
tangible successes and gains

of the civil rights era.

ARCHIVE: We have now won access to
public facilities,

to the right to register to vote,
to the franchise,

to certain positions
of political power.

In the early '80s,

you had these kinds of real signs
of hope.

Reverend Jackson raising our sights
with his presidential run.

ARCHIVE: We will not be on the
outside looking in!

We will be on the inside

and we will be heard!

We will be heard.

CROWD CHANTS: Run, Jesse, run!

Run, Jesse, run!

And he made it seem, for the first
time,

possible that we could win
a nomination,

let alone the Presidency.

ARCHIVE: If we run, we may lose.

If we do not run, we're guaranteed
to lose.

But in running,

we gain our self-respect,

and in running,
the masses register.

In running, our friends can no
longer take us for granted.

At the same time, there was a large
strand of black nationalism.

Minister Farrakhan came out of that
base

and began energising a lot of
people.

ARCHIVE: They are friends.
One, a candidate

for President of the United States.

The other black Muslim,
Louis Farrakhan,

leader of the Nation of Islam -

a black nationalist organisation,

its position taken as a reaction
to what it terms

white racism in American society.

There's always been this dichotomy
in the African-American community,

those that would fight for us
to break in society and succeed,

and those that say, "Forget
about them,

"let's build our own."

ARCHIVE: You are a slave!

A dressed up Brooks Brothers
alligator-shoe-wearing,

diamond-ring-wearing slave.

After Elijah Muhammad, who was
the principal head

of the Nation of Islam, passes away,

Louis Farrakhan starts essentially
Nation of Islam 2.0.

In rebuilding it, one of the things
that he does

is mass distribution of his
speeches.

Just as hip-hop artists
would sell mix tapes,

members of the Nation of Islam
are selling tapes

of Farrakhan's Saviours' Day
speeches and the like.

And, so, African-American youth,
you pick up the latest mix tape

and you pick up the latest
Saviours' Day tape as well.

And, so, Farrakhan's ideas
very much seeps its way back

into the African-American community.

ARCHIVE: He has a lot of guts,

and that's what we need,

somebody with guts.

The '80s, to me,
was a time of expansion.

At the same time,
there were these dark clouds

in the middle of all of that.

ARCHIVE: On September 15th, a young
graffiti artist,

25-year-old Michael Stewart,
was arrested

for scrawling on the wall of a
subway station

at three in the morning.

Stewart's parents and black leaders
charged the young man was killed

by a brutal choke hold applied
by the transit policemen

who arrested him.

Michael Stewart's death vibrated
throughout the city

in such a horrific way.

It wasn't surprising.

I have had my experience
with police officers.

There are some that,
out of frustration,

have overstepped their power
for something that's unnecessary.

Ancl Michael Stewart's death

was obviously an incident
that should have been avoided.

ARCHIVE: He was probably killed
for signing his name like this.

R-A-S.

He only got to the S.

You're supposed to get a ticket
for writing graffiti.

You're not even supposed to get
arrested with handcuffs.

It just showed over and over again

that the same playbook
was being followed.

Ancl there was a lot of frustration

and a lot of heightened nerves
at that time.

The city is still buck wild.

Ancl people perceived someone that's
mysteriously writing something

to be threatening.

ARCHIVE: I think we're talking
more...

I think we're talking about
more than police brutality.

And racism didn't end after the
'60s.

The killing of Michael Stewart,

for a lot of people, that marked
kind of the first hip-hop killing,

when police brutality was brought
to the forefront -

and it was something
that we had been speaking about.

ARCHIVE: He was beaten to death the
same way Arthur Miller

was strangled to death. Claude
Reese, 14 years old, was killed.

Jay Parker, 15-year-old
hon our student, was killed.

Ancl guess who killed them?

Not some thugs or gangsters,

but the people we pay to protect us.

You've got all those ills coming
at us.

And then decisions are made
behind closed doors, in the shadows,

we're going to strip the bottom
off of you all.

ARCHIVE: President Reagan kicked
off a new personal campaign

to promote the idea of a
drug-free society.

Those who smuggle and sell drugs
are as dangerous

to our national security as any
terrorist

or foreign dictatorship.

Reagan is hard on crime.

He launches the war on drugs.

Ancl we all remember Nancy
Reagan saying,

"Just say no," right,

sitting on Mr T's lap.

But what ultimately ends up
happening

is that the war on drugs means a
huge infusion of capital

into these drug enforcement
agencies.

ARCHIVE: Today, it gives me great
pleasure to sign legislation

that reflects the total commitment
of the American people,

and their government, to fight
the evil of drugs.

The Anti-Drug Act of 1986
removes sentencing discretion

from the courts and essentially
places it in the hands

of the federal government

and says this is a minimum
of how you must sentence.

The effort isn't aimed at treatment,

prevention, rehabilitation.

It's aimed at punishing people.

Ancl so the communities that bear
the brunt of this

are urban communities.

They are poor and impoverished
communities

and they are communities that are
disproportionately black and Latino.

Despite our best efforts,

illegal cocaine is coming
into our country,

and 4 to 5 million people
regularly use it.

Today, there's a new epidemic.

Smokable cocaine,
otherwise known as crack.

Crack started out freebase.

They would call it woolie,

so people would take their
marijuana,

throw the crack cocaine in there.

Now, those guys who first got
addicted to crack

were the money-makers,

who always had the fly clothes
and had all the women

and had all the cars.

Those guys are the first guys
that got taken down by crack.

Because crack was, like,
a fly, expensive drug at first.

So you saw these guys who,

where we don't have nobody
in the community to look up to,

these were the stars of our 'hood.

They were the first ones to start
selling their clothes,

their cars
and eventually themselves.

I'll never forget - there was a
woman that lived in my building,

she was probably the most beautiful
woman I ever seen in my life.

I guess she broke up with her
husband,

so she moved into the projects.

And crack caught her.

Ancl guys were doing sexual things
with this woman for $2 for crack.

She eventually died from it.

So this was destroying the best
of the best we had in the community.

I kept hearing about this rock,

and I remember vividly
living in Brooklyn,

I'm renting in a nice little
brownstone block, right,

but over here is a bodega.

And one day there's a bunch of guys
who are hanging out

at the phones all the time.

And these guys were clocking.

You know, they were using the phones
and beepers and all that stuff

and that was like, "Whoa!"

You would go outside,

if you never had nothing,

you'd sell crack,
you made $300 to $400. $1,000.

$1,000 was like $1,000,000
to a kid in the 'hood.

It was that easy to just walk
out your door

and you're going to make money.

And now you fly.

Ancl now you fly,
you get the girls,

you get the power.

Ancl then, you know, with all
that comes the violence,

comes the prison, the destruction
to family.

But the reason why drugs
was so appealing

was, like, it was the only way.

It really was the only way to get
up out the 'hood,

and not even get up out the 'hood,

just to be good in the 'hood

was to sell crack.

In crack cocaine, Reagan has now
found a worthy adversary.

This is an enemy that everyone
can unite around.

It's dangerous. It's deadly.

It will kill you.

There is widespread panic.

Crack is mentioned on every
single major magazine...

...so it becomes much easier to couch
this war on drugs

in both militaristic terms

but also in moral terms.

The crack era gave the perfect
recipe to not only villainise

black men by calling them
drug dealers,

but then to gift or feed
a private prison system

that was just growing.

Reagan also had the support
of the black bourgeoisie,

in that they were just afraid
and didn't know what to do.

From the minute Ronald Reagan
was elected,

all of a sudden,

just like the doors that burst open,

it's cocaine everywhere now.

It's like it's snowfall.
Like, whoa.

Like out of nowhere?

It's PETV with your anchors,

Sherelle Winters
and Flavor Flav.

Yeah, boy!

Yo, bust a move.

# Here it is

# Bam!
In your face.

# Goddamn, this is a dope jam

# But let's define the term
called dope

# And you say gimme funky
Now, no

# Here is a true tale. #

Public Enemy, when it made
Night Of The Living Baseheads,

we wanted to make drugs seem dirty
and ugly.

# The problem is this... #

How do you make that kid go,

"Ugh, I don't want to do that"?

# Selling, smelling,
sniffing, riffing

# And brothers try
to get swift and

# Sell to their own... #

Maybe I learned from the same
manner when I was ten and 11

and would have to go to the Bronx
with my family

and see some old dude

or some Vietnam War vet
shooting up in their arms.

I made sure, in my mind,

I never was going to shoot a needle
in my arm

after I saw this cat.

# Go
I put this together to

# Rock the bells
of those that boost a dose

# Of lack a lack
and those that sell to black

# Shame on a brother when he dealing

# The same block where my 98 be
wheeling... #

You could say it's not good,
but when you say it's ugly

and make you go, ugh,

chances are they ain't going to go
there no more.

# Yo, black, yo
We are willin'

# 4, 5 '0 clock in the morning.

# Wait a minute, y'all
The fiends are fiending... #

Chuck was more than an emcee,
he was a teacher.

Flavor Flav was more than just a
guy doing dope adlibs in the back.

He was a jester to
kind of pull kids in.

The S1Ws represented power
and organisation.

Terminator X was your fierce friend
that silently had your back.

Ancl Professor Griff was
just a zealot about it.

MUSIC: Night Of The Living Baseheads
by Public Enemy

Public Enemy affected me deeply.

It Takes a Nation of
Millions to Hold Us Back.

Black Steel in
the Hour of Chaos.

Had it not been for those
records,

would I have been as emboldened
as I was as a child

to become an organiser?

Would I have understood
the importance

of going to a historically
black college and university?

# Yo, listen, I see it on their
faces... #

People like Chuck D were providing
an example for me

for how the black "learn".

# Day to day
They say no other way

# This stuff is really bad

# I'm talking 'bout bass!
B-b-bass b-bass. #

Public Enemy made us all know
you had to sing about something.

When they came out, N.W.A.
got a little more political.

All of us did.
KRS, all of us did.

Because they was like,
"Yeah, it's cool to entertain,

"but we need to educate
at the same time."

MUSIC CONTINUES

The trick is, you got to hit
this topic from angles.

I met with Minister Farrakhan.

He was basically saying
that we're all spokes on a wheel

and some people ain't going to
listen to him -

they might listen to me,

they might listen to Cube,
they might listen to Chuck.

# Listen... #

But as long as we all
end up at the same place,

which is the betterment
of the world,

it's OK.

# B-b-bass
Bass bass bass bass bass bass. #

Music is the first front line.

When you live in an oppressive
condition, as we do -

as we have and as we do -
it's our first line of defence.

It's our first line of of fence.

VIOLINS PLAY

There was a real sense that finally
there was a voice for the voiceless.

It's time for the
alarm clock to go off.

Public Enemy is an
alarm clock rap group.

What do you think their message is?

Life.
Black consciousness. Yup.

Youth who were into the music
would say,

in the black community, anyway,

that they were really emboldened and
empowered

by knowing they weren't alone

and, through the music,
they could relate to one another.

I heard a number of youth
at the time

say so often what I've been able to
hear

about bigger issues
has come from the pulpit.

But now we have an alternative
to the pulpit.

You know, it's a kind of pulpit.

There's a kind of wisdom, there's
a kind of spiritual guidance

that I'm getting from listening.

Ancl it can be also kind of political
guidance, but it can be, above all,

kind of resistance music
and survival music.

This is defiance in the face of this
onslaught.

ARCHIVE: Being that we don't
have media control

to teach large amounts of people,
you know,

how...what we're about
or how we act

or how we talk or how we do things,

then rap records are kind of filling
that void.

A rap song had the ability to get
a word and a point across

better than a singing song,

which kind of had to play with the
notes.

Rap music didn't have to play
with the notes.

Alll had to do is like, "Boom!"

And this was the beauty
of the vocal execution of it all.

ARCHIVE: I think your line was,
you don't write about anything

that makes people dream
or makes their penises hard.

CHUCKLES
That's fight.

What does that mean?

It's strictly reality music
we're dealing with. Strictly.

I'm really not into
the self-glorification -

"I'm this, I'm that."

You know, it's more we, our, us.

That's basically our mould.

That's why I would say a statement
like that, definitely.

We started out as what would
be called conscious rappers,

or politically social,
socially conscious rappers.

This is why we started.

We wanted to speak a message,

to say what was really going on

on the streets.

In New York,
we had very much divided the city.

Blacks lived in certain
concentrated areas,

whites in other areas,

Latinos in other areas,

and it was almost an unwritten
understanding for blacks

that you should not go into certain
neighbourhoods.

You had a mayor at the time,
Ed Koch,

who played on those divisions.

ARCHIVE: A lot of the foreigners
that have come in have taken in...

...taken over, I should say.

Ancl some of the people, like us,
who've been here for so many years,

resent some of the things
that they want to do.

We feel that it was our
neighbourhood for so many years

and they're kind of taking over.

In 1986, a young man worked for me
and called me

in the middle of the night and said
his cousin had been killed.

I assumed it was about a crack war.

He said would I go and see
the mother?

And when I got to the address,

the mother told me, no,

her son and his friend,
two friends,

had a car breakdown out in Queens.

And they chased him, saying,

"No niggers allowed
in this neighbourhood."

ARCHIVE: Griffith was killed when he
ran onto a highway to escape a group

of white teenagers who had beat and
chased him

and two other young black men
in Howard Beach,

a mostly white section of Queens.

I was outraged and I said,

"No, we need to do something about
this."

ARCHIVE: It looked like Selma,
Alabama in the '60s,

but it was Howard Beach,
New York City, today.

CHANTING: Howard Beach, haven't you
heard? This is notjohannesburg.

The minute we started marching out
there,

hundreds of whites came out
of anywhere...

...and started yelling,
"Niggers, go home.

"What are you all doing out here?
This is our neighbourhood."

And I thought when people saw
that on the news,

it cleared up any ambiguity.

The world saw right in New York City
this kind of rancour and hatred

and hostility toward people
because of the colour of their skin.

ARCHIVE: The anger was clear outside
a courtroom in the borough of Queens

today, where a judge threw out
charges of murder and manslaughter

against three white teenagers
accused of assaulting Griffith.

The judge has held our very lives
in contempt.

We are tired of our lives
being minimised.

When you think about the work
of Spike Lee, up until that moment,

he had tackled a number
of different issues,

but Do The Right Thing
was different.

It talked about the social and
cultural mores of our community.

It really got to the heart of the
tension within New York.

Spike says, "Yo, I'm coming
out with a movie

"talking about this situation
in New York, man,

"this BS going down.
Yo, man, I need the anthem."

Playback.

MUSIC: Fight The Power
by Public Enemy

I remember it like yesterday -
myself, Hank Shocklee,

Bill Stephney and Spike

sitting in a Soho
restaurant in Lower Manhattan

before I go out on an international
tour with Run-D.M.C.

and it comes together,

Fight The Power being the theme.

# We got to
fight the powers that be

# Fight the power

# Fight the power

# Fight the power
Fight the power

# Fight the power... #

Once you had the theme, the words
and the music found itself,

and then Spike took a hold of it.

He took something that was solid
and concrete as a sentiment,

and it becomes greater than the
music and greater than the lyrics.

# People, people, we are the same

# No, we're not the same

# Cos we don't know the game

# What we need is awareness

# We can't get careless

# You say
"What is this?"... #

Fight The Power meant
more than just a song.

It was actually
a call to action.

If you want to change the situation,
the state of black folks

in this country, then you've
got to be willing to stand up

and be actively involved in changing
this situation,

no matter what that looks like.

# Fight the power

# Fight the power

# Fight the power

We've got to find ways
to be involved in a multi-layered

struggle, and Fight The Power
spoke to all of it.

It was an anthem,
but it wasn't just music,

it was a call to action.

# I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped

# Most of my heroes don't appear on
no stamps

# Sample a look back you look and
find nothing but rednecks

# For 400 years if you check

# Don't worry, be happy
Was a number one jam... #

Fight The Power still moves me.

The first time I ever heard
it was amazing.

The video was amazing.

# Right on
Come on... #

If you look at that video, you might
see a few of our faces in there,

holding picket signs - angry kids,
didn't know where to go, didn't know

where to project our anger
at what was going on.

When he called me, we had finished
shooting Do The Right Thing.

Spike said he wanted to do it
really kind of documentary-style.

It was going to be just walking
through the streets. They were going

to be singing Fight The Power.

Well, you know,
it was something I had to do.

# Elvis was a hero to most
but he never meant shit to me

# You see, straight out racist,
the sucker was simple and plain... #

When Chuck was like,
"Elvis was a hero to most

"but he never meant shit to me.

"Racist, the sucker was simple
and plain," I was, like,

"You what?!"
Like, you know what I'm saying?

Because that's where
I'm getting my education.

# Power to the people, no delay
Make everybody see

# In order to fight
the powers that be... #

You knew that this is
somebody who is not only

speaking about the condition,

but speaking about some
solutions that can come.

Right? Like, I'm not just going
to talk about blight, I'm going

to talk about the source

of it, I'm going
to talk about how we got here.

No-one did that up
until PE came on the scene.

To talk about the source
of your discontent?!

It was so dope,

but, like, the message it carried
made it even doper because

they were actually teaching you shit
that you're not going to

learn in schools.
This is what we see.

This is what's going on in our
neighbourhoods and our areas.

This is the frustrations I feel.
This is how maybe I want to fix it.

It's impossible to be apolitical
when you were born inside of it

and you're trying to
find yourself inside of it.

And that was the '80s in a nutshell.

# Don't believe the hype, everybody
Don't believe the hype... #

OK, cut, cut, cut. Cut.

It wasn't so much about the music.

It was the questions that
hip-hop was asking the country.

At the time, the crack cocaine
epidemic was heavy on us.

So, the social
commentary at the time was -

stay away from crack cocaine.

When is it going to stop? I just
don't know when it's going to stop.

The two most profound things
I've lived through were the HIV

and the crack era.

You know, there's still people
walking round with

post-traumatic stress
syndrome from the fear.

ARCHIVE: Our recent findings

that children routinely exposed to
violence

exhibit the same symptoms that
plague combat veterans.

You have the saturation.

When you can watch just so much of
this and experience just

so much of this horror,

and I think probably all of us
have different tolerance levels,

but there come a point when you're
there, and then you're shell shocked.

I would listen to News Radio 88,
it's an all-night news station,

and my family lived in an area
of Brooklyn which had

a lot of crack activity.

Ancl I would listen and I would
hear stories about home invasions

and shoot-outs and stray bullets and
I would always call on home to see -

how is everything going
over there?

I seen my best friend get shot

and this old man get shot.

How old are you? Five.

You see this every day? Yeah.

Ancl that's happening all over
the country, this sense of fear.

That's one thing that we look back
at hip-hop from the mid-'80s,

is that, in a way,

the best part of it is they
documented a certain kind of fear.

Crack. It didn't just happen
everywhere. We're not talking about,

you know, Idaho and Iowa.

We're talking about LA, where you
have a centralised urban community,

we're talking
about in Harlem, New York,

you're talking about Philadelphia,
you're talking about South East DC -

like, you're talking about these
central, urban, black communities

and how drugs are being
introduced into the community,

people are getting
addicted to the drugs

and it's beginning to take
the bottom out of our communities.

I grew up in Oakland,
so Oakland has a nice port.

You know, you could come through
the San Francisco Bay area,

it also had a nice railroad
system as well, and so

those drugs were being allowed in.

Yo, Oakland was so bad at one point,
when you went outside...

I grew up on 23rd Ave,

anybody from Oakland know where
that's at, and you'll walk outside

and, I swear, you could smell
the crack in the air.

Our declaration on war against drugs
seems to have produced

a war of words and not action.

We permitted narcotics. I mean,
we were complicitous as a country

in narcotics traffic,
at the same time

as we're spending countless dollars
in this country to try to get

rid of this problem.
It's mind boggling.

Going to LA in the early
'80s had always been a lot of fun.

A lot of clubs,
there's a lot of funk...parties.

# In these times of hate and pain

# We need a remedy to take us
from the rain... #

Now, by '88, '89, it's changing.
The gang thing happens.

I remember being in a hotel on
Sunset Boulevard with my blue Yankee

hat and being told, "Man, don't wear
that to where we're going."

"Really?" "No, man, don't wear your
Yankee... Don't wear your blue cap

"and, if you've got red,
please don't wear that either."

"You serious?"
"I'm serious, yeah, don't."

As in the old clays, the fights are
over turf. Our turf? KNOCKS ON FENCE

But now, the turf involves
control of a drug market

and the battles are with heavy
weapons, to the death.

Los Angeles was a gang-infested
situation. At the time, you had

Crips and you had what's
called the Brims.

Crips did this, the Brims did this.

The Crips refer to you as Cuz,

the Brims refer to you as Blood.

And that's where the term the Bloods
came from, from the word...

The way we would talk.
"Yo, what's up, Cuz?"

You say "Blood", I would know
that you're from another set.

The actual warfare that is
happening between

rival drug distribution networks,
that what they'd become,

is being exploited by the police
out west, in places like LA,

because they've always been trying
to crack down on black youth.

So, now, any black person, whether
you're living in the suburbs,

like Compton, or you are
an actual member of a gang,

you are being targeted by police,
you are being rounded up.

Walking through a neighbourhood,
right?

You are potentially a gangbanger,
cos they're able to do it

under the guise of drug intervention
and gang prevention.

The Los Angeles Police Department
became

infamous in the streets especially

for continuing to perpetuate
a lot of the negative interaction

that had existed between the
quote-unquote "overseer class",

the white man.

In Southern California,

what we saw was the police
being overzealous

and starting to raid boatloads
of people unnecessarily and using

the batter ram, which is where Toddy
Tee was inspired to make his song.

The LAPD had this ingenious,

I guess in their mind, idea to use
a batter ram to break down walls,

in order to conduct these raids.

What we then see in the music
that is coming out of the West Coast

is explicitly talking about,

in ways that we don't quite hear
in the same way in the Northeast,

about a critique of power
that's rooted in these interactions

with the police.

# 6 in the mornin',
police at my door

# Fresh Adidas
squeak across the bathroom floor

# Out the back window,
I make my escape

# Didn't even get a chance
to grab my old-school tape

# Mad with no music
but happy cos I'm free

# And the streets to a player
is the place to be... #

I had taken the hip-hop bug, but not
as an MC, I wanted to be a Dj.

And I found I got more attention
rapping and, you know,

I knew how to rap,
I knew how to say rhymes and stuff,

cos I used to write
gangbanger rhymes.

And then, my boy was like, "Say that
shit you be saying." "On records?"

"Yeah, say that shit."

So, we made 6 In The Mornin'.

# Sean-e-Sean was the driver
known to give freaks hell

# Had a beeper goin'
off like a high school bell

# Looked in the mirror,
what did we see?

# Fucking blue lights, LAPD... #

Ice-T with 6 In The Mornin',
he's running from the police because

he doesn't think he's going to
have a good interaction with them.

He's also running from the police
because he knows that black

and brown men are targets.

The police had a reputation,
unfortunately,

as we see later on, of treating
black men like pinatas.

# SWAT team leader yelled
hit the floor

# Reached in my pocket,
pulled my .44." #

The press said "gangster rap",
right?

I was like,
"OK, gangster rap,

"and I'm the Original Gangster."

# Broke down an alley,
jumped into a car

# Suckers didn't even see us... #

Ice-T would be the one who changed
what West Coast rap was going

to be, and that is gangster rap.

# Word! #

My whole shape of understanding
from the West Coast comes

out of the seed of Ice-T,

on what's real and what was to be.

Chuck's view was more geopolitical.
It was more about the world

and I was more
about the neighbourhood.

Mine was more about the politics
of that city block.

When I hear gangster rap
records for the first time, I had

a context for it that was different
than maybe other people did,

a lot of other writers,
cos I'd spent dome time out here

and got more interaction

and then realising, this is not like
New York.

Now, I've been in New York and I've
seen a lot of things in New York.

I've never seen people just
in the middle of the street,

face-down in the hot sun.

And they say, “Yeah, man,
that's what they do here

So I started reading up on
the history of LA police.

William Parker, who designed
the post-war LA Police Department,

hired ex-military and Southerners.

We're talking about a
Southern mentality in Parker.

He wants racism and authoritarianism
to be wed together.

A great number of those people
came from areas in the country

where they were much further
dislocated,

much more seriously dislocated
than they are here.

They came in and flooded a community
that wasn't prepared to meet them,

despite the fact that we've got all
this relief money going in there.

We didn't ask
these people to come here.

From the 1950s to the 1960s,

Parker is redefining
the mission of policing.

Policing isn't
just about solving crimes.

Now, it's about solving the
social problem of black folk.

Parker said explicitly,

by 1970, half the city can be black,
and if you don't have

a militaristic police force,

one full of warrior cops,

with an occupational force
mentality,

then God help you. The only thing
standing between you and chaos

is this thin blue line.

Clearly, fearmongering and playing
on racialised fear, in particular.

Let's turn the inner city around.

And I hear the same thing
developing now.

"We want a stake in our community.

"We want to make the decisions."
Well, of course you do.

And I'm all for that.

They talk in the street vernacular -
we think that's wonderful.

But let's do something about 40-50%
of our kids who drop out to do what?

To get involved in drugs and crime -
let's do something about that.

Parker viewed Gates as a mentee,
and Gates Parker as a mentor.

And Daryl Gates continued
the tradition of saying

outrageous things as
Chief of Police -

for example that blacks were
dying from police officer choke holds

because they had some
anatomical quirk.

So he carried on that Parker
tradition, and he was allowed to

because he was supported by
much of Los Angeles, right?

We're not talking about an
institution that's out there

acting on its own - we're talking
about an institution that's

acting in response to the
democratic process that has said,

we want you to be this kind of
institution, we want you as

our violence workers to
unleash your violence

disproportionately on
these communities.

And we're going to keep putting
people like you in those positions.

So these officers
are very much just playing

a kind of representative role.

All right, let's go in!

In order to fight
this wrong of crack

in South Central Los Angeles,

the Los Angeles Police Department
decided, let's step up

our enforcement
and show people that we're serious.

So, when you have
that type of environment,

it's going to lead to
disastrous results.

It is a war - cops against gangs.

As in a war,
the casualties mount every week.

I submit to you that
Daryl Gates is causing

the kind of polarisation that
is dangerous, that Daryl Gates,

on top of the other difficulties
that our community

is experiencing,
is exacerbating that problem.

APPLAUSE

Clearly, it didn't eradicate drugs,

and that's why there was
this built-up frustration

and this built-up rage that bled
from the streets to the music.

# Fuck the police comin'
straight from the underground

# A young nigga got it bad
cos I'm brown

# Ancl not the other colour
so police think

# They have the authority
to kill a minority... #

Fuck Tha Police was
just a hip-hop artist

speaking out against
police brutality,

and that was just our answer
back to getting our asses kicked.

# Fuckin' with me cos I'm a teenager

# With a little bit of gold
and a pager... #

NWA told how it goes down,

and that's exactly how it go down,

how they explained it.

You know, they were just
news reporters reporting on

what we were going through.

# LA, yo, Dre
I got somethin' to say

# Fuck the police

# Fuck, fuck, fuck

# Fuck the police

# Fuck, fuck, fuck

# Fuck the police... #

To me,
what they rapped about, what was

going on in their neighbourhoods,
was reality.

The industry coined it gangsta rap -

everything has to be put in a column
in order for it to be sold.

# Lights start flashin' behind me

# But they're scared of a nigga
so they mace me to blind me

# But that shit don't work... #

A song like Fuck Tha Police - coming
straight from the underground,

a young nigga got it bad cos
I'm brown, not the other colour

so police think they have the
authority to kill a minority.

How does that not at some point
start to affect how you're thinking?

If not about the police,
you start to recognise that

there are alternative
perspectives on the police.

The police maybe for you have
always been a public good.

You've never had a negative
interaction with a police officer.

That's inviting you to adopt
a new perspective and,

if you're open to it,
that's what great literature does,

that's what great art does -
it broadens your perspectives.

# I'm tired of the
motherfuckin' jackin'

# Sweatin' my gang while I'm
chillin' in the shack, and... #

Every single utterance out of
the mouths of young black men,

especially in rap music
in the '80s and the '90s,

had the tone of resistance.

Even if they wasn't saying it,
it was felt.

It's like, how can I be better?
How can I climb up out of this?

How me and my homies and my girl,
my baby mama and my kids,

how we all do well?

We trapped here for real.

# Fuck the police! #

Police said 25-year-old Rodney King

was involved in a high-speed chase

and wanted as a parole violator.

The amateur cameraman said it
appeared to him the suspect

was attempting to cooperate when
the beating with nightsticks began.

Gates was very defensive
in his reaction to the Rodney King

beating tape, but there were
a lot of Angelenos who felt

the same way he did - that they

didn't see anything on that Rodney
King tape that went over the line.

|'ma say something that
might sound kind of sick.

In the back of my head,

I just remember feeling a
little bit elated, like, "Ah!

"We Iem!!!

Nobody can go against what
we're looking at right here.

They're beating him with clubs
and breaking bones - I mean,

these officers were hitting
him till they got tired.

Woo! Hey! We got 'em!

Look what they did to Rodney King,
and that soldier,

that warrior, he survived it.

Not guilty of the crime of assault.

I, like many black Americans,
was dumbfounded by their acquittal

because it was a jury, and they
were supposed to be representing

the community. And so now this is
the community telling us that,

actually,
this is the kind of America

we should expect to live in
for the rest of our lives.

You know, these things were
going on - the turmoil, the tension,

the Latasha Harlins shooting
had happened after Rodney King.

I grew up in South Central
Los Angeles.

It was a struggle but, fortunately,

my grandmother didn't allow us
to see the struggle 100%.

We didn't have to worry about
having the lights cut off or

the gas cut off or not having no
food - she allowed us to be kids.

Latasha was one of my best friends -
more of a sister than a cousin

because we slept in the same bed,

we went to the same schools,

we did everything together.

This grainy security camera
videotape graphically depicts

the last few moments of 15-year-old
Latasha Harlins' life.

Latasha walks into the store,
goes to get an orange juice,

and then, from there,
it just escalated.

Tasha throws a punch, fair to say.

When Latasha walks out,
Soon ja Du brings out her gun

and kills Latasha instantly.

The police get there
an hour and a half later

and walks over Latasha's body to
tend to the person that killed her?

OK.

Right.

A jury convicted Du of
voluntary manslaughter.

A presentence report
recommended the maximum 16 years,

butjudgejoyce Karl in,
on the bench just since July,

imposed probation, a $500 fine -
no jail time.

The judge overruled the jury.

Since she didn't look like a killer,

we're just going to
slap this on her wrist.

I know a criminal when I see one.

When I don't, I treat that person
as something other than that.

After the verdict,
Harlins' family was asked

if this will lead to violence.

Yes, I damn sure hope so,

that were would be all the hell in the black
community... I hope somebody would care...

...that would stand up and see this
insanity for exactly what it is.

...that you can murder a child...
Black people once again

being unjustly treated
by this bent system.

...and walk away and stay on the
street.

Two different stories -

police beating Rodney King,
Asian-American killing Latasha.

But the same outcome, which were
all free, acquitted, let go,

go home, enjoy your life.

That's why the city mad.

ANGRY SHOUTING

You fucking piece-of-shit pig!
I hope you burn in hell, you bent...

That anger that spilled over
was what King was talking about

when he said riots
are the language of the unheard.

# Not guilty, the filthy

# Devils tried to kill me... #

I'm going to stay right here.

We're going to see this through,
we're going to turn

the process around and we're
going to look at the problems.

# Ready for Darryl

# Ancl like Baretta would say

# Keep your eye on the barrel
A sparrow

# Don't do the crime
if you can't do the time

# But I'm rollin'... #

I could feel the rage and the heat
through the TV because I actually

was just in LA and I felt the rage
and the heat already brewing.

# Nothing but food for the maggots

# Lunch, punch, Hawaiian, lyin'

# Brothers ain't bu yin'
Ya story bore me

# Tearing stuff up with fire
Shooters, looters... #

Hip-hop became our political party.

Ancl the artists that spoke to the
community the best

are the artists we'd tend to follow.

Chuck D or KRS-One at that time, or
Ice Cube said,

"Look, we're going to
fight this thing,

"but let's stop burning down
our own neighbourhoods."

# We would a to'
this dirty mutha up... #

The riots harmed
the black community itself

because...many of the buildings
that burned were in

the black community itself.

A lot of times, rage is blind.

That doesn't mean it's still not
understandable.

We see violence.

We see rebellion.
We see uprising.

We see anger.
We see black rage.

But the thing is,
that had been there.

In fact, we had seen moments
like that decades before.

Over and over and over again.

Ancl we see it in the music.

# Didn't get stuck out

# In front of that store with the
Nikes and Adidas... #

We see these songs that are directly

speaking about the problem of
police brutality

and the kind of rage that
black people and black communities

feel at this long history

of torture, of abuse, of inequality.

It's all there.

# Hitting up police killer, the
super-duper brother that'll buck

# We had to tear this mutha up... #

There's a political and
social context to why

those records existed.

Ancl why those...why those
records were popular.

We have no way to vent our, um,
frustration out

cos we already at the bottom.

You know, what else can we do?

When this bill is law, we will have

100,000 police officers
on the street.

A 20% increase.

It will be used to build prisons,

to keep 100,000 violent criminals
off the streets.

# With so much drama in the L-B-C

# It's kind of hard being Snoop
D-O-double-G

# But I, somehow, some way

# Keep comin' up with funky-ass
hits, like, every single day

# May I...? #

West Coast hip-hop started
becoming more prominent.

They were able to reach more people.

That was dope.

# Sippin' on gin and juice,
laid back

# With my mind on my money
and my money on my mind... #

We're going to ban the sale of
this gangster, misogynist rap.

# Sippin' on gin and juice... #

There was a real fear of that
black culture being

so potent that it could
harm your daughter.

# See, everything is fine
when you're listening to the D-O-G

# I got the cultivating music
that be captivating he... #

People get bent out of shape,

and for you to take a lot of these
lyrics seriously is, like,

you're a fucking idiot.

The song goes on,

"I got my brain on hype,

"tonight'll be your night,

"die, die, die, pig, die."

Catchy little number, isn't it?

# With my mind on my money
and my money on my mind

# Later on that day

# My homie Dr Dre came through
with a gang of Tanqueray

# And a fat ass...of some bubonic
that made me choke

# This ain't no joke
I had to back up off of it

# And sit my cup down, Tanqueray
and, yeah, I'm tore down now

# But it ain't no stoppin',
cause I'm still poppin'

# And Dre got some tricks from
the city of Compton

# To serve me,
not with a cherry on top

# Cos when I get through
I gotsta hit the dope spot... #