August 3, 2023 • 49 mins
Nowadays, hip-hop is everywhere -- this genre informs countless aspects of modern music around the world. Shortly after its creation, power structures in the United States sought to suppress this music, perceiving it as a threat to the status quo. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the success of rap... and how the FBI accidentally helped the legendary NWA reach worldwide success.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up up up for
our super producer, our very own DJ, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, it's big and Max Williams Yes.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And to the South Bronx, to the West Coast, to
the East Coast, the Gulf Coast sometimes called the third Coast.
To the South, the South's got something to say, but
the South has something to say.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Doesn't really figure into this particular story of hip hop
was a little bit later, but boy, Ben, you uncovered
a doozy of an episode today in honor of the
fiftieth that's right, fiftieth anniversary of a truly American art form,
hip hop. We got jazz and we got hip hop.
There's other ones peppered in threst. Well, those are the
(01:17):
two biggies, musical theater maybe well the blues first, of course,
that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
And your Nola and I'm Ben, and we are as
you said, my friend, we are celebrating, along with several
of our peer podcasts, we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary
of hip hop an American art form that has united
the world, even while at times it divided its home country.
(01:47):
Since this is a music episode, man, I thought it
was going to be appropriate to let our good, ridiculous
historians out there know about another music related project that
you and your team have just debuted. It comes out
today as we're recording, and so that means that as
people are listening to this episode, you can check out
(02:09):
Nole's new show today.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Ken And speaking of think you've been speaking of the Blues,
The Rolling Stones, contrary to what a lot of people
be associate with them, were always kind of a blues group.
They considered themselves and the people that handled them considered
themselves pure blues musicians. And they really did come from
that tradition, that very American tradition, which is weird considering
(02:33):
they are a group of British punks in the seventies,
in the period we're talking about on this podcast, Stones
touring party making an album in the south of France,
under the influence of heavy narcotics with criminals, you know,
squatting in this crazy villa in villain Nellcott in Nice, France,
and it turned out one of the greatest rock and
(02:55):
roll slash blues albums of all Time, Exile on Main
Street and the subsequent nineteen SEIWO Tour, which was kind
of the archetype for rock and roll tours. And this podcast,
made with my dear friend Jordan Runtog, friend of the show,
and Michael june Alder, also friend of the show, contains
a lot of original music that we did on our
team and Jordan's incredible writing and narration, and original interviews
(03:19):
with the Stones themselves from this period that no one's
ever heard before. Courtesy of our buddy Robert Greenfield, who
was an excellent journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine who covered
the Stones during that era of their career, and he
along with his buddy Gary Stromberg, who did pr for
the Stones during this era, are heavily featured on the
show as well and gave us incredible access. And it's
(03:40):
not just a raw rock and roll kind of show.
There's a lot of true crime in there, you know,
with the drug stuff smuggling, all kinds of criminals running
drugs in the South of France and just America in
this kind of era of just fighting in the streets
and racial protests and violence and Watergate and all of
this stuff that's just going crazy through the lens of
(04:03):
the Rolling Stones touring America. So that's my spiel Stone
Sturing party. Check it out wherever you get podcast. Episode
one is out today. It's called America in Flames, Stones
in Danger, So.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Do check it out, folks. This is a deep dive
into iconic seminal music. And you could say the same
thing about hip hop, you know, in general. Throughout my
entire life, I can say I've met three people who
told me they just don't get music. And that's out
of millions and millions of people that I've had the
(04:35):
fortune and misfortune to run into during my various adventures
and misadventures.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Why wouldn't people like music? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had this beautiful quote. He is one
of the first guys in the West to say music
is the universal language of mankind. Boscott had a quote
that I enjoyed even more, and I think you guys
will like it too. Boscot said, painting is how we
decorate space. Music is how we decorate time. It's brilliant,
(05:02):
It's totally.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
True as a music nerd, and you know, studio rat
when you're recording music. You know, in the era of computers,
you're working on a timeline literally, you're arranging sounds, you know,
from left to right, you know, through the progression of time.
I think that is such an incredible and appropriate quote.
And we're talking also about decorating time with sound historically speaking,
(05:25):
you know that that is sort of what the story
of hip hop is. It is the decoration of time
through music, through recontextualization of other music. It's such a
cool mishmash kind of art form that becomes its own
kind of musical history lesson in and of itself through sampling.
And we did a whole episode on recently as well
as a lot in common with this episode and turntablism,
(05:49):
which we're going to get into, and protests. You know,
that really is at the heart of the original kind
of days of hip hop, especially the era that we're
talking about today. That's the FBI and c you know,
forces in American government took issue with m M.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, and you know it's funny. In twenty nineteen, a
Harvard study I found seemed to prove that Longfellow was correct.
This is a pretty new study. They said some songs
and patterns of noise, if you want to be scientific
about it, just sound quote unquote right to people across
the world. And while entertainment may seem, you know, entertaining,
(06:28):
it's also a powerful technology. It's a way to convey
social and cultural concerns. The cliche is it's a mirror
held up to society. But of course cliches are only
cliches because they are true. If you have control over
books and art, over film and music, then you have
gone a long way toward controlling how a society sees itself.
(06:50):
So we want to look at one particularly a ridiculous
example of this American musical history again and in honor
of the anniversary of hip hop, a moral panic that
occurred when authorities experienced new music something they felt threatened
in their mind. The status quo alluded to it just
(07:13):
a bit. The question why on earth, out of all
the things the Federal Bureau of Investigation has to worry about,
why on Earth what they focus on harassing a group
of young, very poor kids in nineteen eighties Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Doesn't it just kind of seem quaint now, ben like
this concept of them going out of their way being
the FBI to mess with you know, this kind of
upstart community of you know, bee boys and turntable lists
and rappers and this new kind of culture that was
emerging in Los Angeles. But not only that, the songs
that we're going to get into now comparatively seem quite quaint,
(07:54):
you know, in terms of the moral panic you mentioned
a moral panic, Ben, which is just kind of a
manufactured outrage surrounding the idea of something that could quote
unquote corrupt the youth or create mass hysteria or whatever
flavor you want to refer to. But like you go
back and listen to the lyrics of some of these
gangster rap songs we're going to talk about, Boy Howdie
(08:14):
are they tame a lot tamer than anybody would have
you remember, especially folks like Tipper Gore and the FBI.
So to kind of understand, you know, a lot of this,
you have to really understand a bit about the origins
of rap, which I think is something that fascinates both
of us.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Ben.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
You dug deep into some of the earliest examples of
sort of rhythmic spoken word with sort of drum circle
type music.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
M Yeah, we're talking about grio. So the story of
all your favorite hip hop songs really starts thousands of
years ago, albeit indirectly, because way back then millennia in
the past, in the continent of Africa, grio would tell
these stories while playing handmade instruments, and they may have
(09:05):
call and response parts to this too. It came with drums,
as you were saying, right, and this was You could
think of it as a style of talking somewhere between
a ballad and epic poetry or oration. It carried across
the Atlantic during the slave trade, and while enslaved peoples
(09:26):
were forced to labor in fields and agriculture and other pursuits,
they would engage with these traditions of call and response.
They would share stories and culture through this grio art form,
which continued to evolve. Just so you know where the
story begins. Now we're going to fast forward and max
(09:50):
just like hold down the fast forward button for a while,
where yeah, we're going centuries into the future, all the
way to what would later be my birthday August eleventh,
in nineteen seventy three in Bronx, New York.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
That's so cool. We were both born very close to
the birth of hip hop. Can't Be Quit, as was
our pal Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Let's see.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I think they'll be okay with us disclosing this. Matt's
birthday is August fifth, Noel, Yours is August eighth.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Correct. Mine is the eleventh, So weird.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
It's almost like odd numbers, you know, if only mine
was on the seventh.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
No. I still I'm you know what I bet so
I can make it.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Those three, five, seven, nine, eleventh. Okay, never mind. I'm
obviously great at math and numbers and stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
As was DJ Coolherk Totally. I had this attempted to segue.
He was alderful.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
He was known for his math skills and also mainly
known as the first DJ and the founding father of
hip hop. He and his sister Cindy started hosting which
just sounds so wholesome Ben back to school parties in
the rec room of their apartment building. And it was
it was here where kind of the early roots of
(11:07):
hip hop began to take shape. Do you roots take shape?
They sure do. I guess as they grow, that's what
they do.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, And oh, I've got to ask Max, we we're
gonna be rude Winds your birthday?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Are you okay? Saying it on air? Oh yeah, yeah,
it's April twelve. There's no time related. That's the only
reason I didn't mention it. I don't know, it's all.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It's all the way though. In my my planning skills
are so bad. I'm actually I'm scary good at like freestyling,
but planning skills.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I need to know. I need to know.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
April is just enough time for me to get stuff
together for your birthday.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
So freestyling, whether it be on the mic or just
you know, at activities, Yeah, yeah, just figuring things out
on the fly, I think is a really important skill,
and that a lot of that too, really is a
skill that goes into these early stages of hip hop
where her yeah cool herk is all about like there
was my better attempts of transition. Cool heirk is all
(12:02):
about like taking stuff that he already has, right to turntable,
And a lot of this were people like their parents
had a turntable that was a staple of the home.
So they take this down to the rec room. Maybe
there's already one in the rec room, and hey, wait,
maybe let's not just use one, let's take two, you know,
and hook them up. They didn't even have probably a
proper quote unquote DJ mixer, because that.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Wasn't a thing. This is like the beginning.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
They probably had to hook it up through two inputs
on a tuner of some kind, or maybe two completely
separate stereos. I would imagine just guessing here, and he
would do a thing that is to sometimes referred to
as juggling, sometimes referred to as merry go rounding, where
you take two copies of the same LP and juggle
the break back and forth, or the very least juggle
a portion where on the left table you play, you know,
(12:48):
up to the point where the break ends, and then
you flip over to the other one and you play
from there. And it requires some real precision to get
that right and to make it sound like a contiguous
kind of loop. Now now it's easy to do it
in programs like Ableton or whatever, where you can just
loop something. And that this is the invention, essentially, or
at least the innovation of the idea of looping.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah, and this is why so many of your favorite
songs and instrumentals exist. And of course it extends well
past what would be called hip hop. Now we want
to thank a guy named Jim Frick, the editor of
the excellent Yes Yes, You All the Experienced Music project
oral history of hip hop's first decade.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
He says, he.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Continues, and he confirms your rap is a genre begins
at these block parties in New York City in the
early nineteen seventies. DJ's start are starting to isolate percussion
breaks from disco, from soul, from funk and looping them
like you said, Noel extending them and at the time,
and there were MC's, but they weren't like they're the stars. Yeah,
(13:57):
they were a lot like if you've ever been to
a wedding that had a DJ, they were a lot
more like wedding DJs.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
They would come on in between the.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Songs, you know, like hey and all the single ladies
get out, or like hey, Nana is seventy six, Go Nana.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Like a radio DJ, you know, or at least the
culture of like think about like the style of speaking,
you know, like it probably became more like rap or
the rhythmic quality, but it really was just kind of
like using all the cool like you know, slang of
the time, and like just the rhythm of I'm sound
like such a grandpa, like the rhythm of the streets
like there was a quality of speech that represented like
(14:37):
if you've ever seen what's the Spike Lee movie.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Do the Right Thing.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There's a character that's like kind of a constant presence
in the film who's like a DJ. He has this
kind of cool rhythmic quality the flow of which she's
introducing the songs, and he becomes this kind of like feature,
this almost narrator in the film. That's probably more what
early you know MC's were, which stands for Master of
Sarah Monies, which is literally the job of someone at
an event that kind of keeps things on track, but
(15:05):
it's necessarily the star of the show. The music and
the dancing was the star of the show right right.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
The audience, Uh, the the audience was kind of an
instrument as well.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I would argue that both the DJ and the MC played.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
There's a lot of Jamaican culture that is inherent in this,
in this blend with sound systems right and with the
idea of the the PA right, and the MC is
part of this the idea of toasting, which is which
is less like a rap song, but still it's kind
of like a dis track. Anyway, over time, these mcs
(15:42):
would later become known as rappers. They would they would
talk in rhythm like you said, and they would begin
to rhyme, and then they would also they were already
talking on rhythm in sync with music, and they started
throwing in rhymes with this rhyme schemes. Initially, people dismissed
this as a fad. Even people as close as Manhattan
(16:02):
dismissed it as a fad. But in nineteen seventy nine
everything changed because the Sugarhill Gang came out with rappers
the light and people started to pay attention. We also
see we've got to shout out DJ Grand Wizard Theodore,
who has said to have accidentally invented the method of scratching.
(16:23):
There's a great quest love drunk history about this, and
the scratching became enormously influential. Grand Master Flash other legends
quickly pick it up. This guy Wizard Theodore also pioneers
the use of the needle drop. That's where instead of
silently queuing up the next record in the rotation, the
DJ drops the needle on the exact beginning of the song.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Have you ever seen a really, really, really amazing DJ
perform It's like seeing a magician, or like an illusionist
like it because they're you know, like for example, like
kid Koala is a really really really cool one, like
obviously a grandmaster Flash DJ Jazzy Jeff, you know, hell,
what's his name? DJ Collin. That guy's got serious turntable chops.
(17:09):
Like you don't really think of him like that. You
think about more as like a producer. But I've seen
some videos of him, but that needle drop technique, Like
I saw a performance from a live performance from Kikuala once.
He does this thing where he plays moon River on
like he has four turntables and he pitches the he
changes the pitch the speed of the turntable with the
(17:30):
slider it's on the turntable while moving the needle per
note like he'll pitch it up a semi tone and
then move it to another part of the thing. And
he's playing it like with the needle drops and it's seamless,
and it's so magical to see that done with that
level of precision. This is where it begins. The idea
of this is not how you were supposed to use
(17:51):
a turntable. Your dad would yell at you for scratching
the record or dropping the needle like that this is
people using technology incorrectly and making it the new way
technology is used.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
And I want to give a shout out to another
DJ that I think is amazing. Just DJ Baboo, one
third of Dilated Peoples out of the West Coast. He's
super about fantastic. Yeah, I think they're props.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I think they're excellent, and then people don't talk about
them as much as they should.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I'm so glad to hear you mentioned them. They're so cool.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Well, if we start naming all the all the DJs
we love, we've got a different episode. But this is
you could tell we're fans of this. I grew up
in this, like we we love this stuff. Okay, it's
the mid nineteen eighties, sometimes called the golden age of
hip hop. Now, this is where run DMC comes from.
This is where rock keem comes from. They're pushing the boundaries.
(18:45):
This art form, it's important to note, is always continually evolving.
And I love I love that we're pointing out it
was wholesome in the beginning, very much so, and it
was a new genre of music. It would spread past
the bounds of the Big Apple, it would touch every.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Corner of the globe.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
And now new generations musicians all across the world put
their spin on it. It is one part of a
larger culture, you know, including graffiti, including the breaks a
break dancing rather the bee Boys, And unfortunately, as it's growing,
it comes with some growing pains.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Not everybody likes it. And Noel, we can't talk.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
About the growth of rap and hip hop without talking
about the dawn of gangster rap.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, it's true because you know, to your point,
been especially mentioning like Rakim and run DMC. I mean
like early rap or hip hop, Like if you listen
think about gang rappers of July, it is all kind
of this up dup dup dup dat up do dub
dub dada. It's a little goofy and it sounds a
little dated now. I mean it's important in some of
(19:53):
that stuff. There's some really clever wordplay, but it's a
little like it's about partying and not even like it's
not having a good tis right to a little bit
of bravado, you know, but nothing very like substantive, nothing
like ra Kim and Rehn DMC start to push that
in a different direction, like rare Kim in particular, really
(20:13):
sort of elevated the like cadences of rap, and they
started making the rhythm of the of the delivery much
more complex. But then when you get gangster rapp, you
really start to see young people from like South central
Los Angeles for example, where there's a lot of crime,
a lot of gang activity, a lot of drug dealing
and violence using this platform to talk about their lives.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
And you know, sort of a chicken or the egg
type question, you gotta wonder.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Like, did they see the commercial value in this or
were they just being entirely confessional like or was it
some combination of both, because to me, it seems more
like it was the record executives that saw the commercial
potential and it was more like these guys were more
like young punks kind of just doing their thing.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
But I don't know, maybe I'm being naive. No, it's
very rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
There is a very punk aesthetic to it because they're
telling the truth. They paint in the mid nineteen eighties,
so while it's the mainstream golden age of hip hop,
gangster rap is evolving. And there were yeah, earlier songs
were fun, they're about partying and dancing. Gangst rap has
this violent dystopian picture of a society gone wrong. You know,
(21:23):
crime is a career, gangs are a necessity, violence.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Is a way of life.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And there's an episode we did for Stuff they Don't
Want You to Know, which talks about the conspiracy theory
that music executives continually try to monetize violent rap and
some sort of mastermind way of manipulating society that hasn't
(21:48):
been conclusively proven.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Do you check out that episode?
Speaker 1 (21:51):
What you need to what we need to know here
is that these these young guys, they're very young guys
this time.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
They are.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Maybe out to make a little bit of money, but
in the beginning, it's just cool to do something creative.
By the way, this is we should give people their
props to their flowers. Schooly D of Philadelphia is one
of the first gangster rappers to come to prominence in
eighty five, with songs like PSK what does it mean?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
What does it mean? Ben?
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yes, Well it's kind of long. If you look at
the lyrics. P for the people who can't understand how
one homeboy became a man? As for the way we
scream and shout one by one, I'm knocking you out,
K for the way my DJ's cutting, other mcs ain't
saying nothing.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
I think there's a typo in there. Cutting. It starts
with a C. That's called styling. That's what that's called. Again.
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Look, you talk about graffiti culture like, you know, all
of this stuff like lingo or you know, like slang,
all of the things of this culture contributed to pop culture.
It's it's immeasurable. It's insane, you know. I mean, there's
so much stuff wrapped into hip hop. It's about so
much more than just the music. It's really really, really
really interesting. But you're right, Ben, I think it's important
(23:11):
to mention that, you know, the Schoolly D was from Philly,
but this period really did shift kind of the focus
of hip hop squarely to the West Coast one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, So shout out to KRS one when Criminal Minded,
shout out to the ghetto boys in Houston, Texas. Now
we have to get to the big group in w
A in WA stands for blank with an attitude. So
(23:45):
we're not gonna we're not gonna use the word ourselves.
We don't have the qualifications to do. So they come
out with this album called Straight Out of Compton, and
like you said, it shifts the sort of geographical center
of hip hop culture. And they're very playing about how
violent life is in the streets of South central LA
(24:05):
and in Compton, and there's hyperrealism there, but there's also
a lot of myth, a lot of bravado declarations of immortality,
and this exaggeration, critics would later argue, becomes a kind
of self protective, delusional device for listeners who are actually
involved in this incredibly dangerous lifestyle. In WA is chronically
(24:27):
and we're getting we're getting that take from an excellent
article on BBC by Rebecca Lawrence called n WA the
World's most dangerous group.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Question mark, question mark. That's the funny thing about this, right,
the idea of dangerous. You know, like we know that
people did get murdered, do get murdered, I mean in
in South central Laws and all kinds of all pockets
of the United States.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
You know, it's a thing.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Violence is an American you know tradition, I mean only
in other parts of the world too. But like we know,
gun violence has showed no signs of slowing. If anything,
it's just kind of worse than it's ever been. And
there are other countries that just don't experience that in
the same way. So it makes sense that this, you know,
culture of music that came out kind of mimiced that
(25:15):
culture of violence. Not mimic, but the very least was
a mirror kind of being held up to it. And
you're right, Ben about the exaggeration of Bravada, but that's
just part of the swagger of being an MC. You
know what as at heart of these lyrics is real.
These people were getting killed and the police were not
to be trusted.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Right, I would say there's also you know, with the
with this history of violence, we're specifically talking about the
history of state sponsored violence against minorities, and these folks
were not lying about the problems in LA. At the time,
recession de industrialization had led to these huge job losses.
(25:54):
Nineteen eighty three, youth employment there was nearly fifty percent.
Almost one out of every two people didn't have a
job and would have a very hard time trying to
find one. Hundreds of rival gangs sprung up, the most
notorious or well known in mainstream culture being the Crips
and the Bloods, But they are just the two most
(26:15):
well known crack cocaine epidemic, the police are increasingly militarized
in WA, both as a group and in their solo albums. Later,
they shake up America, they reclaim the inWORD. This becomes
a huge matter of public debate, right and ice Cube
makes this argument. He says, look, we're turning this into
(26:37):
a positive appellation. You know, we are owning this. Now
it's our We're taking the word back. And of course
there was a very hefty side of misogyny in the lyrics,
but hey, it's nothing but music, right. America is the
land of free speech and theory, and a lot of
people way before NWA said a lot of much more hurtful,
(26:59):
much more violent things, for instance, country music, which for
some reason always gets a pass in the modern day.
But to some members of America's power structure, these young
men were a rise of the historic underclass. The FBI
felt threatened, and things came to a head when n
WA released perhaps the most well known song, max, I
(27:23):
guess we should bleep it fuck the police beep.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
And again at the top, we sort of both were just,
you know, thinking about how a lot of these lyrics
now are just so comparatively tame compared to other things
that have come after that, you know, the level of
depravity in some more modern music, you know, whether it
be metal, death metal, or some forms of hip hop.
(27:52):
But I mean, when you're saying this, this is like
an anthem, you know, this is like a slogan the police,
you know, and it's it's now more than ever incredibly important.
And again I'm not saying I know there's some good
police out there that are out there to do a
good job to help people. But in America we are
kind of in an epidemic of police violence, and with
(28:15):
things like you know, cop City here in Atlanta and
all of the public outcries just because there's just no
trust for the police, you know, with slayings of minorities
just being broadcast left and right, and you hear about
a new one, you know, on the regular. This was
very much opprescient song and is not It's not just shock,
(28:39):
you know, it's it's real. It's a real sentiment of
people being scared. I mean, Ice Cube would later say
in interviews that, you know, if people in his community
were in trouble, the police were the last people they
would call, Oh yeah, it wasn't a racist sentiment. It
wasn't like because they're white or whatever. A lot of
these people weren't white. A lot of these cops. It
has something to do with race. It just has to
(28:59):
do with the systematic violence towards minorities and the way
those communities are police and the fact that you'd be
more likely to get in trouble or to get robbed
by the police than just keeping it within your own community.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, and you know, you can make an argument that
a lot of people had a problem with this song.
Didn't get past the part where they say, again, fuck
the police. They didn't pay attention to lyrics that say
things like fucking with me because I'm a teenager with
a little bit of golden paper, searching for my car,
looking for the product, thinking every is selling narcotics, you
(29:32):
know what I mean. Like they're talking about profiling, they're
talking about racism, state sponsored violence. They're not just they're
not just like, eh, you know, south Park style. They're
making a point here. And this did not get radio airplay,
of course, it did not get promotion for the label initially.
Despite all that, in six weeks straight out at Compton
(29:55):
goes gold, eventually it goes double platinum. It's crossing over
or into mainstream wide American culture because just like rock music, right,
just like punk music, people like to hear someone fighting
the power, and that provoked concern among the US establishment
parent groups. The religious right eventually caught the attention to
(30:16):
law enforcement because you know, they're in the song.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Of course they are.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
They're they're targeted, and essentially, you know, whatever it's, it's
it's a philosophical targeting. No one is advocating in this song.
There is another song that'll come a little later from
a solo effort from one of the members of NWA,
but there's no advocation in the song for like let's
go kill cops.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
That's not what it's about.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
It. It's it's expressing a very real, you know, situation
that occurs, you know, all the time in these neighborhoods
that they're living in. But you know, you mentioned where
we're going with the connection to law enforcement and them
kind of entering the scene. This is no different than
j Edgar Hoover targeting John Lennon.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Or Mick Jagger.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
You know, they were scared of people with control over
voting blocks, you know, over like the youth movements, and
to them, this wasn't just entertainment, this was influence. This
was dangerous, yeah, exactly. And they they saw this as
a threat to society as they understood it. And that's why,
(31:21):
out of all the problems they dealt with on a
daily basis, the drug trade, trafficking, murder, domestic terrorism, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation said, let's put that stuff on
hold for a second. We need to take out gangster
rap and these NWA kids in particular, this was a
moral panic. And Britannica defines moral panic as I mean,
(31:44):
you nailed the definition pretty much earlier. It's it's a
phrase used in sociology to describe an artificially created panic
or scare.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
They're cyclical.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Researchers demonstrate that what they call more entrepreneurs demonize dangerous
groups to serve their own self motivated or self interested ends.
And although the specifics and moral panics vary throughout history,
usually they are initiated by the very powerful to manage
(32:16):
the body and behavior of the poor and the power less.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
And oftentimes the folks who initiate it haven't even done
their homework, Like like don't even know what they're talking
about in terms of what the lyrics are referring to.
They get hung up on a word or a concept
or something like that, and like like but they haven't
even really listened to the record or they really can't
possibly wrap their head around the cultural significance of what
(32:42):
it represents. They're just saying, no, these these you know,
gangsters are coming for our children, you know, and then
they're trying to influence them and make them join gangs, and.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
You know, it's absurd.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I mean, certainly, maybe there was one kid who like
got into gun violence because he listened to a record,
but by and large, I don't think that's how that works,
you know, Like I just don't same with the Marilyn
Manson stuff and the what was that the.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Texas case with the with the.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Kids who were listening to the Marilyn Manson and death
metal who got accused of those child murders at robin
Hood Hills. What is that called the Memphis West Memphis
three I believe is what that one's called.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, we well we also know that they we also
know that this moral panic was a bipartisan panic. And
first off, when I say cyclical, let us assure you
I would not be surprised if centuries ago some new
form of chanting and canticles came out and there was
(33:43):
some guys like I only like Gregorian chant. It happens
whatever the new stuff comes through, right, That's why, like
people I'm sure were scared of of each boys, they're
scared of Elvis, even though he appropriated music that have
been along around for so long.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Anyways, people were probably scared of Rance.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Well at the time, you know what I mean, anything
that now just seems so mickey mouse. There was a
time where if it wasn't classical music, it was somehow offensive,
and even classical music at times, like you know, Stravinsky
was punk rock and would cause these outrages of people,
you know, getting into these sort of reveries that like
these concerts where people were like screaming and throwing things
(34:22):
because it was just so bombastic.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
The saxophone was punk rock. Punk rock is a mentality,
and NWA is punk rock for sure, which is why
you see later M season producers from NWA hanging out
with rock and roll stuff. We don't want to spoke
too much yet, but okay, so it's bipartisan, right. The
people who are mad at NWA. There's a group called
(34:48):
the Parents Music Resource Center, founded in nineteen eighty five
entirely because some powerful people in Washington are worried about
what their kids are listening to. The way the story
goes is Tipper Gore, when you hear of most often,
she was the wife of Al Gore, who was the
(35:09):
Senator of Tennessee at the time, and she bought an
album called Purple Rain by Prince Legendary for her daughter,
who was eleven at the time. And as Tipper is
listening to these songs on the album, she finds that
one of them, darling Nicky, has a reference to masturbation,
(35:30):
to female masturbation.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Once again, though you're buying your eleven year old a
Prince album. Have you've not seen his earlier work, like
Dirty Minds and stuff?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I mean, like, wasn't that before Purple Rain?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
I mean, like he's always been this like sexual kind
of figure. Dynamo Yeah no, yeah, freaking Dirty Mind came
out in nineteen eighty and the cover is him wearing
like a like with a happy trail coming out of
his like g string you know, I mean, is you know,
there's it's no question what is going on.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
With this guy?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
So you're like, oh, purple Rain, Well that sounds fun.
I bet my eleven year old like that. Give me
a break, you know, And then then all of a sudden,
the pm r C becomes a thing. Ben, do you
remember the first CD you had that maybe you had
to smuggle or have a friend sneak to you or whatever,
that had that fricking parental advisory explicit lyrics sticker on it.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
They invented this, Yeah, that's right. Do you remember Green
Day Dookie?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
That's crazy and that I would I don't even I
think there may well have been versions of that that
didn't have it.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Oh yeah, because they would they would sell the clean versions,
but nobody nobody wanted the clean versions.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Maybe I just can't quite remember.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I guess there's they used the F word maybe one
one song on that record. And there's also a hidden
track that's apparently about masturbation that I didn't believe that
for years, but then I hear it now.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Of course. That's what it's about.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
My point though, is there was very hazy criteria even
for what into like an album deserving one of these stickers,
you know, And sometimes they would be stickers, actual stickers
placed on it, and sometimes they would be embedded in
the art, the actual art of and it's all very hazy,
sort of like at least with ratings for movies you
kind of know, like a PG thirteen movie.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I think can say the F word one time.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
There's very hazy still, but not nearly as hazy as this.
The first one I ever had was Black Sunday by
Cypress Hill, and it was kind of slipped to me
by a friend and youth group.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And if you all remember the cover of that album,
it looks like a death metal album cover.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
It's like like just like piles of the graveyard stones
and skulls and stuff, and there's a lot of black
on it.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
And my friend very cleverly scribbled over the parental advisory
part with a black sharpie and you couldn't see it.
It was genius.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I wish I still had that such a relic for
my childhood. But if anything, though, it gave records that
had that sticker on it a sense of danger and
like this is what you want, kids, This is the
good stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
And that comes into play a little later for sure. Yeah,
like The point is, two years before NWA is even
a thing, they become active in nineteen eighty seven, two
years before they become a thing, there's already a powerful
group formed to clutch their pearls and panic not just
about NWA, but about all music they find objectionable. In
(38:25):
nineteen eighty nine, FBI assistant director Mitt Erlich sends out
a letter to the NWA distributor and says the album,
straight out of Compton quote, encourages violence against and disrespect
for the law enforcement officer, and also says you could
read the whole letter. He also says he speaks for
(38:48):
all law enforcement to be fair. He says he just
wants to bring this matter to the attention of the
record company priority. But that does feel like a threat
when Shackbi writes to.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
You, right, it's the implication if something happened to your
little hip hop concerts, you know what I mean. And
so there are some concerts and tours that get affected.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
In eighty nine, and WA's touring America.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
And they police are urged by this faction, you know,
to interfere with their concerts.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
The fax each other information about it.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, factions be factions, and so in Detroit. Actually the
band is even arrested, you know. I mean, this is
very very interesting parallels to not to plug again, but
to the Stones seventy two tour, where they're arrested. They're
treated as this counterculture kind of like bell Weather, you know,
(39:49):
and this is very similar to this band from Compton,
which to some parts of the country may as well
have been the Moon, you know what I mean. It
was just like so alien and weird that it happened
in Detroit, because that's if I think of that as
much more of like a kind of you know, hip
hop centric and like kind of culturally progressive city.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
But I guess that doesn't have anything to do with
the police, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
No. Yeah, the idea too that the FBI was monitoring
the individual's inn wa ice Cube, who we pulled a
lot of interviews from. He had an interview with Billboard
much much later when he said, look, we were just
locals in Los Angeles. We went from being these kids
to tangling with the biggest power entities out there. There
(40:35):
were all kinds of forces against us, but it didn't
make us bite our tongue. It made us stand up
even more. We should also know this is the very
first time in FBI history that they had ever done
anything like this for a musical album of any sort.
Excerpts from the letter are Excerpts from the letter give
a lot of statistics. They say things like, violent crime
(40:59):
is a problem, is reached it unprecedented high in nineteen
eighty eight. They talk about the seventy eight law enforcement
officers that were murdered in eighty eight and four more
in eighty seven. But they don't give the other sides
of the facts. They don't or you know, they don't
give other contextual clues, like the number of black men
(41:21):
who had died in police custody during those same years.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
They say.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
They conclude by saying music plays a significant role in society.
And the director said, and the assistant director says, I
wanted you to be aware of the FBI's position relative
to this song and its message. I believe my views
reflect the opinion of the entire law enforcement community. And
what did NWA do. They played the song everywhere they went,
(41:49):
every show, every appearance, no matter the protest, no matter
the police presence.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It's amazing. It's so punk rock. I mean, it reminds
me of like there's a lot of you.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Can find clips of like all of the artists that
were banned from ever performing on Saturday Night Live again,
and it's usually because they did something politically divisive, you know,
like rest in Peace Shinead O'Connor by the way, who
who passed away recently. But famous clip of her ripping
up a picture of the Pope on SNL. You know,
she really was pilloried for that, but then later it
turned out, yeah, the Catholic Church was doing some really
(42:20):
awful stuff that she was protesting.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
But Elvis Costello got banned.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
I think it may have been rescinded because he was
asked not to play his song Radio Radio, which is
about the record industry and how like twisted and corrupt
the record industry is. And so that was like literally,
you know, representatives from the media saying, hey, don't put
poke your finger in the eye of our buddies, the
record industry, you know, and he said, okay, okay, and
(42:45):
then he did it anyway, and then it got it
got him in trouble.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
The rage against the machine for another Saturday Live example.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
That's right with the flag maybe had something to doing
upside down flag, the American flag.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
That's I'm reading the article right now. No, that's cool, man.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
This stuff is inherently punk rock, you know, speaking truth
to power. We haven't talked about Public Enemy much yet,
but their song fight the Power in nineteen eighty nine
another excellent just kind of you know, anthem for this
kind of anti establishment stuff. And it really is a
carryover from like attitudes of like rock and roll bands,
you know, from the sixties and seventies, the late sixties
(43:20):
and early seventies.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
It's really interesting and so this.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Is a scary time, but these guys have the grit
to not bow, to not bend, and not break. And
the FBI letter is probably one of the best things
that ever happened to n WA's career because the wrong Yeah,
the marketing geniuses at the record label, they say, you
(43:44):
know what, we're going public. They send this letter to
the press, it's part of their press kit. There's this
whole new interest in Compton in general. It also was
a tremendous help that Tipper Gores group Parrot Music Resource
Center did call in the world's most Dangerous group and
they let This all led to the creation of that
(44:07):
explicit printal advisory label. Basically, we're looking at the Streisand
effect because the power structure tried to tell everybody not
to listen to in Wa, everybody listened to NWA.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, it's like the old joke about like if the
bottle of pills says, don't operate heavy machinery while taking it,
then those are the ones that are the fun pills.
I've heard from comedians that that's the case. But yeah,
I love your use of the Streisand effect. Barbara Streisand
famously tried to get images of herself that were unflattering
shricken from the Internet, and just the very fact that
(44:43):
she wanted this to happen made the Internet just spread them.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Further and wider than ever would have been the case
if she had just shut up about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I think it was pictures of her house. She asked
people not to put pictures of her house off, and
then Beyonce encountered the Streisand effect by asking people to
take of lattering pictures. The thing is if something if
something like that happens. Yeah, like you said so beautifully, man,
people people aren't gonna comply when you tell them that
(45:11):
kind of stuff, especially if you're talking about you're the
person in the crowd saying, Okay, I know we've all
had fun, but let's calm down because it's almost seven
point thirty and fellow hip hop fans of the audience,
you know, there is so much more that we didn't
get to today, but we wanted to end here with
our big, big thanks to all the legends of this
(45:34):
genre of hip hop and rap. We found one note
that we thought would just be the perfect.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
One to end on.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
What happened to that letter from the FBI, you may
ask today. It is in the rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, of which NWA is.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
A member, and in a lot of hay has been
made by certain types. I guess that's not rock and roll.
Screw that, it totally is.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Whatever.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Rock and roll is an a MorphOS concept, like you said,
just like punk rock. It doesn't refer to a sound,
It refers to like an attitude and a mentality. And like,
this is so important, you know the fact that they
took this strongly worded letter from the FBI and made
it spun it into marketing.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Gold because it just shows how.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Square the FBI was, And again, like we said at
the top of the show, how quaint it feels now
the thought of the FBI expending any amount.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Of resource on this kind of witch hunt, you know, And.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
I don't know, Ben, do you think Tipper Gore and
her ilk meant well or do you think they were
just trying to shut down poor people?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
I think I think it was probably a half and
half thing. Those are not mutually exclusive motives. People usually,
even people we consider villains, usually see themselves as heroes
and think they're doing the right thing. And that's not
say they're bad people, but they could have. There was
a political calculation, doubtlessly, because you want to cause you
(47:00):
and rally or base around, and in this case, their
cause was misdirected. It did not work out, It did
not address the problems from which this music arose. And
with that, I say we we first, we give our
we give our thanks of course to doctor dre Ice Cube,
DJ Yella mc redden and Easy of n W A
(47:22):
thank you for making this episode possible.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
And thanks to all the incredible artists that have come
out of hip hop, all of the contributions that you've
made to pop culture, to social justice, you know, to
so many aspects that are very very positive, you know,
in American society and global society. I mean, you know,
because hip hop isn't just We're sitting here in Atlanta,
(47:44):
which is like kind of a hotbed of hip hop,
you know, with outcasts and so many incredible artists that
have come yeah exactly that have come out of this city.
But hip hop is a global phenomenon at this point.
You know, it's it's not just American. Everybody loves it,
and it's something that just about anybody, even if that's
not your background, Like in terms of the perspective that's
(48:05):
being described, there's something that you can still take from it.
There's wisdom, you know, the word play, just the just
I don't know, it's wisdom. There really is so much
of that in the lyrics of of truly great hip hop.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
And of course thank you to our our own DJ,
our own doctor Dre, mister Max Williams, thanks to Jonathan
Strickland who is kind of our fbi aka the quizt
Orgar Hoover. Yeah, and thanks to who else Alex Williams
composing this banging tracks, Jeff cot who uh who's on
(48:41):
in person at the office the other way. Yeah, Yeah,
Eve's always a pleasure. Maybe we can get her back
on the show soon and big big thanks to of
course christ Fossio.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Just here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
I guess Tipper Gore, who also made this episode.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Would she ended up going on to do working on
a new show with us?
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Oh cool, we're doing a new show with Eve's Jeff Cookee,
not with Tipper Gore to mine.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Got it? Okay, thank god, We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Box. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up up up for
our super producer, our very own DJ, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, it's big and Max Williams Yes.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And to the South Bronx, to the West Coast, to
the East Coast, the Gulf Coast sometimes called the third Coast.
To the South, the South's got something to say, but
the South has something to say.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Doesn't really figure into this particular story of hip hop
was a little bit later, but boy, Ben, you uncovered
a doozy of an episode today in honor of the
fiftieth that's right, fiftieth anniversary of a truly American art form,
hip hop. We got jazz and we got hip hop.
There's other ones peppered in threst. Well, those are the
(01:17):
two biggies, musical theater maybe well the blues first, of course,
that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
And your Nola and I'm Ben, and we are as
you said, my friend, we are celebrating, along with several
of our peer podcasts, we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary
of hip hop an American art form that has united
the world, even while at times it divided its home country.
(01:47):
Since this is a music episode, man, I thought it
was going to be appropriate to let our good, ridiculous
historians out there know about another music related project that
you and your team have just debuted. It comes out
today as we're recording, and so that means that as
people are listening to this episode, you can check out
(02:09):
Nole's new show today.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Ken And speaking of think you've been speaking of the Blues,
The Rolling Stones, contrary to what a lot of people
be associate with them, were always kind of a blues group.
They considered themselves and the people that handled them considered
themselves pure blues musicians. And they really did come from
that tradition, that very American tradition, which is weird considering
(02:33):
they are a group of British punks in the seventies,
in the period we're talking about on this podcast, Stones
touring party making an album in the south of France,
under the influence of heavy narcotics with criminals, you know,
squatting in this crazy villa in villain Nellcott in Nice, France,
and it turned out one of the greatest rock and
(02:55):
roll slash blues albums of all Time, Exile on Main
Street and the subsequent nineteen SEIWO Tour, which was kind
of the archetype for rock and roll tours. And this podcast,
made with my dear friend Jordan Runtog, friend of the show,
and Michael june Alder, also friend of the show, contains
a lot of original music that we did on our
team and Jordan's incredible writing and narration, and original interviews
(03:19):
with the Stones themselves from this period that no one's
ever heard before. Courtesy of our buddy Robert Greenfield, who
was an excellent journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine who covered
the Stones during that era of their career, and he
along with his buddy Gary Stromberg, who did pr for
the Stones during this era, are heavily featured on the
show as well and gave us incredible access. And it's
(03:40):
not just a raw rock and roll kind of show.
There's a lot of true crime in there, you know,
with the drug stuff smuggling, all kinds of criminals running
drugs in the South of France and just America in
this kind of era of just fighting in the streets
and racial protests and violence and Watergate and all of
this stuff that's just going crazy through the lens of
(04:03):
the Rolling Stones touring America. So that's my spiel Stone
Sturing party. Check it out wherever you get podcast. Episode
one is out today. It's called America in Flames, Stones
in Danger, So.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Do check it out, folks. This is a deep dive
into iconic seminal music. And you could say the same
thing about hip hop, you know, in general. Throughout my
entire life, I can say I've met three people who
told me they just don't get music. And that's out
of millions and millions of people that I've had the
(04:35):
fortune and misfortune to run into during my various adventures
and misadventures.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Why wouldn't people like music? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had this beautiful quote. He is one
of the first guys in the West to say music
is the universal language of mankind. Boscott had a quote
that I enjoyed even more, and I think you guys
will like it too. Boscot said, painting is how we
decorate space. Music is how we decorate time. It's brilliant,
(05:02):
It's totally.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
True as a music nerd, and you know, studio rat
when you're recording music. You know, in the era of computers,
you're working on a timeline literally, you're arranging sounds, you know,
from left to right, you know, through the progression of time.
I think that is such an incredible and appropriate quote.
And we're talking also about decorating time with sound historically speaking,
(05:25):
you know that that is sort of what the story
of hip hop is. It is the decoration of time
through music, through recontextualization of other music. It's such a
cool mishmash kind of art form that becomes its own
kind of musical history lesson in and of itself through sampling.
And we did a whole episode on recently as well
as a lot in common with this episode and turntablism,
(05:49):
which we're going to get into, and protests. You know,
that really is at the heart of the original kind
of days of hip hop, especially the era that we're
talking about today. That's the FBI and c you know,
forces in American government took issue with m M.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, and you know it's funny. In twenty nineteen, a
Harvard study I found seemed to prove that Longfellow was correct.
This is a pretty new study. They said some songs
and patterns of noise, if you want to be scientific
about it, just sound quote unquote right to people across
the world. And while entertainment may seem, you know, entertaining,
(06:28):
it's also a powerful technology. It's a way to convey
social and cultural concerns. The cliche is it's a mirror
held up to society. But of course cliches are only
cliches because they are true. If you have control over
books and art, over film and music, then you have
gone a long way toward controlling how a society sees itself.
(06:50):
So we want to look at one particularly a ridiculous
example of this American musical history again and in honor
of the anniversary of hip hop, a moral panic that
occurred when authorities experienced new music something they felt threatened
in their mind. The status quo alluded to it just
(07:13):
a bit. The question why on earth, out of all
the things the Federal Bureau of Investigation has to worry about,
why on Earth what they focus on harassing a group
of young, very poor kids in nineteen eighties Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Doesn't it just kind of seem quaint now, ben like
this concept of them going out of their way being
the FBI to mess with you know, this kind of
upstart community of you know, bee boys and turntable lists
and rappers and this new kind of culture that was
emerging in Los Angeles. But not only that, the songs
that we're going to get into now comparatively seem quite quaint,
(07:54):
you know, in terms of the moral panic you mentioned
a moral panic, Ben, which is just kind of a
manufactured outrage surrounding the idea of something that could quote
unquote corrupt the youth or create mass hysteria or whatever
flavor you want to refer to. But like you go
back and listen to the lyrics of some of these
gangster rap songs we're going to talk about, Boy Howdie
(08:14):
are they tame a lot tamer than anybody would have
you remember, especially folks like Tipper Gore and the FBI.
So to kind of understand, you know, a lot of this,
you have to really understand a bit about the origins
of rap, which I think is something that fascinates both
of us.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Ben.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
You dug deep into some of the earliest examples of
sort of rhythmic spoken word with sort of drum circle
type music.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
M Yeah, we're talking about grio. So the story of
all your favorite hip hop songs really starts thousands of
years ago, albeit indirectly, because way back then millennia in
the past, in the continent of Africa, grio would tell
these stories while playing handmade instruments, and they may have
(09:05):
call and response parts to this too. It came with drums,
as you were saying, right, and this was You could
think of it as a style of talking somewhere between
a ballad and epic poetry or oration. It carried across
the Atlantic during the slave trade, and while enslaved peoples
(09:26):
were forced to labor in fields and agriculture and other pursuits,
they would engage with these traditions of call and response.
They would share stories and culture through this grio art form,
which continued to evolve. Just so you know where the
story begins. Now we're going to fast forward and max
(09:50):
just like hold down the fast forward button for a while,
where yeah, we're going centuries into the future, all the
way to what would later be my birthday August eleventh,
in nineteen seventy three in Bronx, New York.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
That's so cool. We were both born very close to
the birth of hip hop. Can't Be Quit, as was
our pal Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Let's see.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I think they'll be okay with us disclosing this. Matt's
birthday is August fifth, Noel, Yours is August eighth.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Correct. Mine is the eleventh, So weird.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
It's almost like odd numbers, you know, if only mine
was on the seventh.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
No. I still I'm you know what I bet so
I can make it.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Those three, five, seven, nine, eleventh. Okay, never mind. I'm
obviously great at math and numbers and stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
As was DJ Coolherk Totally. I had this attempted to segue.
He was alderful.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
He was known for his math skills and also mainly
known as the first DJ and the founding father of
hip hop. He and his sister Cindy started hosting which
just sounds so wholesome Ben back to school parties in
the rec room of their apartment building. And it was
it was here where kind of the early roots of
(11:07):
hip hop began to take shape. Do you roots take shape?
They sure do. I guess as they grow, that's what
they do.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, And oh, I've got to ask Max, we we're
gonna be rude Winds your birthday?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Are you okay? Saying it on air? Oh yeah, yeah,
it's April twelve. There's no time related. That's the only
reason I didn't mention it. I don't know, it's all.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It's all the way though. In my my planning skills
are so bad. I'm actually I'm scary good at like freestyling,
but planning skills.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I need to know. I need to know.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
April is just enough time for me to get stuff
together for your birthday.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
So freestyling, whether it be on the mic or just
you know, at activities, Yeah, yeah, just figuring things out
on the fly, I think is a really important skill,
and that a lot of that too, really is a
skill that goes into these early stages of hip hop
where her yeah cool herk is all about like there
was my better attempts of transition. Cool heirk is all
(12:02):
about like taking stuff that he already has, right to turntable,
And a lot of this were people like their parents
had a turntable that was a staple of the home.
So they take this down to the rec room. Maybe
there's already one in the rec room, and hey, wait,
maybe let's not just use one, let's take two, you know,
and hook them up. They didn't even have probably a
proper quote unquote DJ mixer, because that.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Wasn't a thing. This is like the beginning.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
They probably had to hook it up through two inputs
on a tuner of some kind, or maybe two completely
separate stereos. I would imagine just guessing here, and he
would do a thing that is to sometimes referred to
as juggling, sometimes referred to as merry go rounding, where
you take two copies of the same LP and juggle
the break back and forth, or the very least juggle
a portion where on the left table you play, you know,
(12:48):
up to the point where the break ends, and then
you flip over to the other one and you play
from there. And it requires some real precision to get
that right and to make it sound like a contiguous
kind of loop. Now now it's easy to do it
in programs like Ableton or whatever, where you can just
loop something. And that this is the invention, essentially, or
at least the innovation of the idea of looping.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah, and this is why so many of your favorite
songs and instrumentals exist. And of course it extends well
past what would be called hip hop. Now we want
to thank a guy named Jim Frick, the editor of
the excellent Yes Yes, You All the Experienced Music project
oral history of hip hop's first decade.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
He says, he.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Continues, and he confirms your rap is a genre begins
at these block parties in New York City in the
early nineteen seventies. DJ's start are starting to isolate percussion
breaks from disco, from soul, from funk and looping them
like you said, Noel extending them and at the time,
and there were MC's, but they weren't like they're the stars. Yeah,
(13:57):
they were a lot like if you've ever been to
a wedding that had a DJ, they were a lot
more like wedding DJs.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
They would come on in between the.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Songs, you know, like hey and all the single ladies
get out, or like hey, Nana is seventy six, Go Nana.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Like a radio DJ, you know, or at least the
culture of like think about like the style of speaking,
you know, like it probably became more like rap or
the rhythmic quality, but it really was just kind of
like using all the cool like you know, slang of
the time, and like just the rhythm of I'm sound
like such a grandpa, like the rhythm of the streets
like there was a quality of speech that represented like
(14:37):
if you've ever seen what's the Spike Lee movie.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Do the Right Thing.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There's a character that's like kind of a constant presence
in the film who's like a DJ. He has this
kind of cool rhythmic quality the flow of which she's
introducing the songs, and he becomes this kind of like feature,
this almost narrator in the film. That's probably more what
early you know MC's were, which stands for Master of
Sarah Monies, which is literally the job of someone at
an event that kind of keeps things on track, but
(15:05):
it's necessarily the star of the show. The music and
the dancing was the star of the show right right.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
The audience, Uh, the the audience was kind of an
instrument as well.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I would argue that both the DJ and the MC played.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
There's a lot of Jamaican culture that is inherent in this,
in this blend with sound systems right and with the
idea of the the PA right, and the MC is
part of this the idea of toasting, which is which
is less like a rap song, but still it's kind
of like a dis track. Anyway, over time, these mcs
(15:42):
would later become known as rappers. They would they would
talk in rhythm like you said, and they would begin
to rhyme, and then they would also they were already
talking on rhythm in sync with music, and they started
throwing in rhymes with this rhyme schemes. Initially, people dismissed
this as a fad. Even people as close as Manhattan
(16:02):
dismissed it as a fad. But in nineteen seventy nine
everything changed because the Sugarhill Gang came out with rappers
the light and people started to pay attention. We also
see we've got to shout out DJ Grand Wizard Theodore,
who has said to have accidentally invented the method of scratching.
(16:23):
There's a great quest love drunk history about this, and
the scratching became enormously influential. Grand Master Flash other legends
quickly pick it up. This guy Wizard Theodore also pioneers
the use of the needle drop. That's where instead of
silently queuing up the next record in the rotation, the
DJ drops the needle on the exact beginning of the song.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Have you ever seen a really, really, really amazing DJ
perform It's like seeing a magician, or like an illusionist
like it because they're you know, like for example, like
kid Koala is a really really really cool one, like
obviously a grandmaster Flash DJ Jazzy Jeff, you know, hell,
what's his name? DJ Collin. That guy's got serious turntable chops.
(17:09):
Like you don't really think of him like that. You
think about more as like a producer. But I've seen
some videos of him, but that needle drop technique, Like
I saw a performance from a live performance from Kikuala once.
He does this thing where he plays moon River on
like he has four turntables and he pitches the he
changes the pitch the speed of the turntable with the
(17:30):
slider it's on the turntable while moving the needle per
note like he'll pitch it up a semi tone and
then move it to another part of the thing. And
he's playing it like with the needle drops and it's seamless,
and it's so magical to see that done with that
level of precision. This is where it begins. The idea
of this is not how you were supposed to use
(17:51):
a turntable. Your dad would yell at you for scratching
the record or dropping the needle like that this is
people using technology incorrectly and making it the new way
technology is used.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
And I want to give a shout out to another
DJ that I think is amazing. Just DJ Baboo, one
third of Dilated Peoples out of the West Coast. He's
super about fantastic. Yeah, I think they're props.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I think they're excellent, and then people don't talk about
them as much as they should.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I'm so glad to hear you mentioned them. They're so cool.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Well, if we start naming all the all the DJs
we love, we've got a different episode. But this is
you could tell we're fans of this. I grew up
in this, like we we love this stuff. Okay, it's
the mid nineteen eighties, sometimes called the golden age of
hip hop. Now, this is where run DMC comes from.
This is where rock keem comes from. They're pushing the boundaries.
(18:45):
This art form, it's important to note, is always continually evolving.
And I love I love that we're pointing out it
was wholesome in the beginning, very much so, and it
was a new genre of music. It would spread past
the bounds of the Big Apple, it would touch every.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Corner of the globe.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
And now new generations musicians all across the world put
their spin on it. It is one part of a
larger culture, you know, including graffiti, including the breaks a
break dancing rather the bee Boys, And unfortunately, as it's growing,
it comes with some growing pains.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Not everybody likes it. And Noel, we can't talk.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
About the growth of rap and hip hop without talking
about the dawn of gangster rap.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, it's true because you know, to your point,
been especially mentioning like Rakim and run DMC. I mean
like early rap or hip hop, Like if you listen
think about gang rappers of July, it is all kind
of this up dup dup dup dat up do dub
dub dada. It's a little goofy and it sounds a
little dated now. I mean it's important in some of
(19:53):
that stuff. There's some really clever wordplay, but it's a
little like it's about partying and not even like it's
not having a good tis right to a little bit
of bravado, you know, but nothing very like substantive, nothing
like ra Kim and Rehn DMC start to push that
in a different direction, like rare Kim in particular, really
(20:13):
sort of elevated the like cadences of rap, and they
started making the rhythm of the of the delivery much
more complex. But then when you get gangster rapp, you
really start to see young people from like South central
Los Angeles for example, where there's a lot of crime,
a lot of gang activity, a lot of drug dealing
and violence using this platform to talk about their lives.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
And you know, sort of a chicken or the egg
type question, you gotta wonder.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Like, did they see the commercial value in this or
were they just being entirely confessional like or was it
some combination of both, because to me, it seems more
like it was the record executives that saw the commercial
potential and it was more like these guys were more
like young punks kind of just doing their thing.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
But I don't know, maybe I'm being naive. No, it's
very rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
There is a very punk aesthetic to it because they're
telling the truth. They paint in the mid nineteen eighties,
so while it's the mainstream golden age of hip hop,
gangster rap is evolving. And there were yeah, earlier songs
were fun, they're about partying and dancing. Gangst rap has
this violent dystopian picture of a society gone wrong. You know,
(21:23):
crime is a career, gangs are a necessity, violence.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Is a way of life.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And there's an episode we did for Stuff they Don't
Want You to Know, which talks about the conspiracy theory
that music executives continually try to monetize violent rap and
some sort of mastermind way of manipulating society that hasn't
(21:48):
been conclusively proven.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Do you check out that episode?
Speaker 1 (21:51):
What you need to what we need to know here
is that these these young guys, they're very young guys
this time.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
They are.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Maybe out to make a little bit of money, but
in the beginning, it's just cool to do something creative.
By the way, this is we should give people their
props to their flowers. Schooly D of Philadelphia is one
of the first gangster rappers to come to prominence in
eighty five, with songs like PSK what does it mean?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
What does it mean? Ben?
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yes, Well it's kind of long. If you look at
the lyrics. P for the people who can't understand how
one homeboy became a man? As for the way we
scream and shout one by one, I'm knocking you out,
K for the way my DJ's cutting, other mcs ain't
saying nothing.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
I think there's a typo in there. Cutting. It starts
with a C. That's called styling. That's what that's called. Again.
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Look, you talk about graffiti culture like, you know, all
of this stuff like lingo or you know, like slang,
all of the things of this culture contributed to pop culture.
It's it's immeasurable. It's insane, you know. I mean, there's
so much stuff wrapped into hip hop. It's about so
much more than just the music. It's really really, really
really interesting. But you're right, Ben, I think it's important
(23:11):
to mention that, you know, the Schoolly D was from Philly,
but this period really did shift kind of the focus
of hip hop squarely to the West Coast one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, So shout out to KRS one when Criminal Minded,
shout out to the ghetto boys in Houston, Texas. Now
we have to get to the big group in w
A in WA stands for blank with an attitude. So
(23:45):
we're not gonna we're not gonna use the word ourselves.
We don't have the qualifications to do. So they come
out with this album called Straight Out of Compton, and
like you said, it shifts the sort of geographical center
of hip hop culture. And they're very playing about how
violent life is in the streets of South central LA
(24:05):
and in Compton, and there's hyperrealism there, but there's also
a lot of myth, a lot of bravado declarations of immortality,
and this exaggeration, critics would later argue, becomes a kind
of self protective, delusional device for listeners who are actually
involved in this incredibly dangerous lifestyle. In WA is chronically
(24:27):
and we're getting we're getting that take from an excellent
article on BBC by Rebecca Lawrence called n WA the
World's most dangerous group.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Question mark, question mark. That's the funny thing about this, right,
the idea of dangerous. You know, like we know that
people did get murdered, do get murdered, I mean in
in South central Laws and all kinds of all pockets
of the United States.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
You know, it's a thing.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Violence is an American you know tradition, I mean only
in other parts of the world too. But like we know,
gun violence has showed no signs of slowing. If anything,
it's just kind of worse than it's ever been. And
there are other countries that just don't experience that in
the same way. So it makes sense that this, you know,
culture of music that came out kind of mimiced that
(25:15):
culture of violence. Not mimic, but the very least was
a mirror kind of being held up to it. And
you're right, Ben about the exaggeration of Bravada, but that's
just part of the swagger of being an MC. You
know what as at heart of these lyrics is real.
These people were getting killed and the police were not
to be trusted.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Right, I would say there's also you know, with the
with this history of violence, we're specifically talking about the
history of state sponsored violence against minorities, and these folks
were not lying about the problems in LA. At the time,
recession de industrialization had led to these huge job losses.
(25:54):
Nineteen eighty three, youth employment there was nearly fifty percent.
Almost one out of every two people didn't have a
job and would have a very hard time trying to
find one. Hundreds of rival gangs sprung up, the most
notorious or well known in mainstream culture being the Crips
and the Bloods, But they are just the two most
(26:15):
well known crack cocaine epidemic, the police are increasingly militarized
in WA, both as a group and in their solo albums. Later,
they shake up America, they reclaim the inWORD. This becomes
a huge matter of public debate, right and ice Cube
makes this argument. He says, look, we're turning this into
(26:37):
a positive appellation. You know, we are owning this. Now
it's our We're taking the word back. And of course
there was a very hefty side of misogyny in the lyrics,
but hey, it's nothing but music, right. America is the
land of free speech and theory, and a lot of
people way before NWA said a lot of much more hurtful,
(26:59):
much more violent things, for instance, country music, which for
some reason always gets a pass in the modern day.
But to some members of America's power structure, these young
men were a rise of the historic underclass. The FBI
felt threatened, and things came to a head when n
WA released perhaps the most well known song, max, I
(27:23):
guess we should bleep it fuck the police beep.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
And again at the top, we sort of both were just,
you know, thinking about how a lot of these lyrics
now are just so comparatively tame compared to other things
that have come after that, you know, the level of
depravity in some more modern music, you know, whether it
be metal, death metal, or some forms of hip hop.
(27:52):
But I mean, when you're saying this, this is like
an anthem, you know, this is like a slogan the police,
you know, and it's it's now more than ever incredibly important.
And again I'm not saying I know there's some good
police out there that are out there to do a
good job to help people. But in America we are
kind of in an epidemic of police violence, and with
(28:15):
things like you know, cop City here in Atlanta and
all of the public outcries just because there's just no
trust for the police, you know, with slayings of minorities
just being broadcast left and right, and you hear about
a new one, you know, on the regular. This was
very much opprescient song and is not It's not just shock,
(28:39):
you know, it's it's real. It's a real sentiment of
people being scared. I mean, Ice Cube would later say
in interviews that, you know, if people in his community
were in trouble, the police were the last people they
would call, Oh yeah, it wasn't a racist sentiment. It
wasn't like because they're white or whatever. A lot of
these people weren't white. A lot of these cops. It
has something to do with race. It just has to
(28:59):
do with the systematic violence towards minorities and the way
those communities are police and the fact that you'd be
more likely to get in trouble or to get robbed
by the police than just keeping it within your own community.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, and you know, you can make an argument that
a lot of people had a problem with this song.
Didn't get past the part where they say, again, fuck
the police. They didn't pay attention to lyrics that say
things like fucking with me because I'm a teenager with
a little bit of golden paper, searching for my car,
looking for the product, thinking every is selling narcotics, you
(29:32):
know what I mean. Like they're talking about profiling, they're
talking about racism, state sponsored violence. They're not just they're
not just like, eh, you know, south Park style. They're
making a point here. And this did not get radio airplay,
of course, it did not get promotion for the label initially.
Despite all that, in six weeks straight out at Compton
(29:55):
goes gold, eventually it goes double platinum. It's crossing over
or into mainstream wide American culture because just like rock music, right,
just like punk music, people like to hear someone fighting
the power, and that provoked concern among the US establishment
parent groups. The religious right eventually caught the attention to
(30:16):
law enforcement because you know, they're in the song.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Of course they are.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
They're they're targeted, and essentially, you know, whatever it's, it's
it's a philosophical targeting. No one is advocating in this song.
There is another song that'll come a little later from
a solo effort from one of the members of NWA,
but there's no advocation in the song for like let's
go kill cops.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
That's not what it's about.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
It. It's it's expressing a very real, you know, situation
that occurs, you know, all the time in these neighborhoods
that they're living in. But you know, you mentioned where
we're going with the connection to law enforcement and them
kind of entering the scene. This is no different than
j Edgar Hoover targeting John Lennon.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Or Mick Jagger.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
You know, they were scared of people with control over
voting blocks, you know, over like the youth movements, and
to them, this wasn't just entertainment, this was influence. This
was dangerous, yeah, exactly. And they they saw this as
a threat to society as they understood it. And that's why,
(31:21):
out of all the problems they dealt with on a
daily basis, the drug trade, trafficking, murder, domestic terrorism, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation said, let's put that stuff on
hold for a second. We need to take out gangster
rap and these NWA kids in particular, this was a
moral panic. And Britannica defines moral panic as I mean,
(31:44):
you nailed the definition pretty much earlier. It's it's a
phrase used in sociology to describe an artificially created panic
or scare.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
They're cyclical.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Researchers demonstrate that what they call more entrepreneurs demonize dangerous
groups to serve their own self motivated or self interested ends.
And although the specifics and moral panics vary throughout history,
usually they are initiated by the very powerful to manage
(32:16):
the body and behavior of the poor and the power less.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
And oftentimes the folks who initiate it haven't even done
their homework, Like like don't even know what they're talking
about in terms of what the lyrics are referring to.
They get hung up on a word or a concept
or something like that, and like like but they haven't
even really listened to the record or they really can't
possibly wrap their head around the cultural significance of what
(32:42):
it represents. They're just saying, no, these these you know,
gangsters are coming for our children, you know, and then
they're trying to influence them and make them join gangs, and.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
You know, it's absurd.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I mean, certainly, maybe there was one kid who like
got into gun violence because he listened to a record,
but by and large, I don't think that's how that works,
you know, Like I just don't same with the Marilyn
Manson stuff and the what was that the.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Texas case with the with the.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Kids who were listening to the Marilyn Manson and death
metal who got accused of those child murders at robin
Hood Hills. What is that called the Memphis West Memphis
three I believe is what that one's called.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, we well we also know that they we also
know that this moral panic was a bipartisan panic. And
first off, when I say cyclical, let us assure you
I would not be surprised if centuries ago some new
form of chanting and canticles came out and there was
(33:43):
some guys like I only like Gregorian chant. It happens
whatever the new stuff comes through, right, That's why, like
people I'm sure were scared of of each boys, they're
scared of Elvis, even though he appropriated music that have
been along around for so long.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Anyways, people were probably scared of Rance.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Well at the time, you know what I mean, anything
that now just seems so mickey mouse. There was a
time where if it wasn't classical music, it was somehow offensive,
and even classical music at times, like you know, Stravinsky
was punk rock and would cause these outrages of people,
you know, getting into these sort of reveries that like
these concerts where people were like screaming and throwing things
(34:22):
because it was just so bombastic.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
The saxophone was punk rock. Punk rock is a mentality,
and NWA is punk rock for sure, which is why
you see later M season producers from NWA hanging out
with rock and roll stuff. We don't want to spoke
too much yet, but okay, so it's bipartisan, right. The
people who are mad at NWA. There's a group called
(34:48):
the Parents Music Resource Center, founded in nineteen eighty five
entirely because some powerful people in Washington are worried about
what their kids are listening to. The way the story
goes is Tipper Gore, when you hear of most often,
she was the wife of Al Gore, who was the
(35:09):
Senator of Tennessee at the time, and she bought an
album called Purple Rain by Prince Legendary for her daughter,
who was eleven at the time. And as Tipper is
listening to these songs on the album, she finds that
one of them, darling Nicky, has a reference to masturbation,
(35:30):
to female masturbation.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Once again, though you're buying your eleven year old a
Prince album. Have you've not seen his earlier work, like
Dirty Minds and stuff?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I mean, like, wasn't that before Purple Rain?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
I mean, like he's always been this like sexual kind
of figure. Dynamo Yeah no, yeah, freaking Dirty Mind came
out in nineteen eighty and the cover is him wearing
like a like with a happy trail coming out of
his like g string you know, I mean, is you know,
there's it's no question what is going on.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
With this guy?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
So you're like, oh, purple Rain, Well that sounds fun.
I bet my eleven year old like that. Give me
a break, you know, And then then all of a sudden,
the pm r C becomes a thing. Ben, do you
remember the first CD you had that maybe you had
to smuggle or have a friend sneak to you or whatever,
that had that fricking parental advisory explicit lyrics sticker on it.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
They invented this, Yeah, that's right. Do you remember Green
Day Dookie?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
That's crazy and that I would I don't even I
think there may well have been versions of that that
didn't have it.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Oh yeah, because they would they would sell the clean versions,
but nobody nobody wanted the clean versions.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Maybe I just can't quite remember.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I guess there's they used the F word maybe one
one song on that record. And there's also a hidden
track that's apparently about masturbation that I didn't believe that
for years, but then I hear it now.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Of course. That's what it's about.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
My point though, is there was very hazy criteria even
for what into like an album deserving one of these stickers,
you know, And sometimes they would be stickers, actual stickers
placed on it, and sometimes they would be embedded in
the art, the actual art of and it's all very hazy,
sort of like at least with ratings for movies you
kind of know, like a PG thirteen movie.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I think can say the F word one time.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
There's very hazy still, but not nearly as hazy as this.
The first one I ever had was Black Sunday by
Cypress Hill, and it was kind of slipped to me
by a friend and youth group.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And if you all remember the cover of that album,
it looks like a death metal album cover.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
It's like like just like piles of the graveyard stones
and skulls and stuff, and there's a lot of black
on it.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
And my friend very cleverly scribbled over the parental advisory
part with a black sharpie and you couldn't see it.
It was genius.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I wish I still had that such a relic for
my childhood. But if anything, though, it gave records that
had that sticker on it a sense of danger and
like this is what you want, kids, This is the
good stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
And that comes into play a little later for sure. Yeah,
like The point is, two years before NWA is even
a thing, they become active in nineteen eighty seven, two
years before they become a thing, there's already a powerful
group formed to clutch their pearls and panic not just
about NWA, but about all music they find objectionable. In
(38:25):
nineteen eighty nine, FBI assistant director Mitt Erlich sends out
a letter to the NWA distributor and says the album,
straight out of Compton quote, encourages violence against and disrespect
for the law enforcement officer, and also says you could
read the whole letter. He also says he speaks for
(38:48):
all law enforcement to be fair. He says he just
wants to bring this matter to the attention of the
record company priority. But that does feel like a threat
when Shackbi writes to.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
You, right, it's the implication if something happened to your
little hip hop concerts, you know what I mean. And
so there are some concerts and tours that get affected.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
In eighty nine, and WA's touring America.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
And they police are urged by this faction, you know,
to interfere with their concerts.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
The fax each other information about it.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, factions be factions, and so in Detroit. Actually the
band is even arrested, you know. I mean, this is
very very interesting parallels to not to plug again, but
to the Stones seventy two tour, where they're arrested. They're
treated as this counterculture kind of like bell Weather, you know,
(39:49):
and this is very similar to this band from Compton,
which to some parts of the country may as well
have been the Moon, you know what I mean. It
was just like so alien and weird that it happened
in Detroit, because that's if I think of that as
much more of like a kind of you know, hip
hop centric and like kind of culturally progressive city.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
But I guess that doesn't have anything to do with
the police, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
No. Yeah, the idea too that the FBI was monitoring
the individual's inn wa ice Cube, who we pulled a
lot of interviews from. He had an interview with Billboard
much much later when he said, look, we were just
locals in Los Angeles. We went from being these kids
to tangling with the biggest power entities out there. There
(40:35):
were all kinds of forces against us, but it didn't
make us bite our tongue. It made us stand up
even more. We should also know this is the very
first time in FBI history that they had ever done
anything like this for a musical album of any sort.
Excerpts from the letter are Excerpts from the letter give
a lot of statistics. They say things like, violent crime
(40:59):
is a problem, is reached it unprecedented high in nineteen
eighty eight. They talk about the seventy eight law enforcement
officers that were murdered in eighty eight and four more
in eighty seven. But they don't give the other sides
of the facts. They don't or you know, they don't
give other contextual clues, like the number of black men
(41:21):
who had died in police custody during those same years.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
They say.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
They conclude by saying music plays a significant role in society.
And the director said, and the assistant director says, I
wanted you to be aware of the FBI's position relative
to this song and its message. I believe my views
reflect the opinion of the entire law enforcement community. And
what did NWA do. They played the song everywhere they went,
(41:49):
every show, every appearance, no matter the protest, no matter
the police presence.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
It's amazing. It's so punk rock. I mean, it reminds
me of like there's a lot of you.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Can find clips of like all of the artists that
were banned from ever performing on Saturday Night Live again,
and it's usually because they did something politically divisive, you know,
like rest in Peace Shinead O'Connor by the way, who
who passed away recently. But famous clip of her ripping
up a picture of the Pope on SNL. You know,
she really was pilloried for that, but then later it
turned out, yeah, the Catholic Church was doing some really
(42:20):
awful stuff that she was protesting.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
But Elvis Costello got banned.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
I think it may have been rescinded because he was
asked not to play his song Radio Radio, which is
about the record industry and how like twisted and corrupt
the record industry is. And so that was like literally,
you know, representatives from the media saying, hey, don't put
poke your finger in the eye of our buddies, the
record industry, you know, and he said, okay, okay, and
(42:45):
then he did it anyway, and then it got it
got him in trouble.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
The rage against the machine for another Saturday Live example.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
That's right with the flag maybe had something to doing
upside down flag, the American flag.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
That's I'm reading the article right now. No, that's cool, man.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
This stuff is inherently punk rock, you know, speaking truth
to power. We haven't talked about Public Enemy much yet,
but their song fight the Power in nineteen eighty nine
another excellent just kind of you know, anthem for this
kind of anti establishment stuff. And it really is a
carryover from like attitudes of like rock and roll bands,
you know, from the sixties and seventies, the late sixties
(43:20):
and early seventies.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
It's really interesting and so this.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Is a scary time, but these guys have the grit
to not bow, to not bend, and not break. And
the FBI letter is probably one of the best things
that ever happened to n WA's career because the wrong Yeah,
the marketing geniuses at the record label, they say, you
(43:44):
know what, we're going public. They send this letter to
the press, it's part of their press kit. There's this
whole new interest in Compton in general. It also was
a tremendous help that Tipper Gores group Parrot Music Resource
Center did call in the world's most Dangerous group and
they let This all led to the creation of that
(44:07):
explicit printal advisory label. Basically, we're looking at the Streisand
effect because the power structure tried to tell everybody not
to listen to in Wa, everybody listened to NWA.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, it's like the old joke about like if the
bottle of pills says, don't operate heavy machinery while taking it,
then those are the ones that are the fun pills.
I've heard from comedians that that's the case. But yeah,
I love your use of the Streisand effect. Barbara Streisand
famously tried to get images of herself that were unflattering
shricken from the Internet, and just the very fact that
(44:43):
she wanted this to happen made the Internet just spread them.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Further and wider than ever would have been the case
if she had just shut up about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I think it was pictures of her house. She asked
people not to put pictures of her house off, and
then Beyonce encountered the Streisand effect by asking people to
take of lattering pictures. The thing is if something if
something like that happens. Yeah, like you said so beautifully, man,
people people aren't gonna comply when you tell them that
(45:11):
kind of stuff, especially if you're talking about you're the
person in the crowd saying, Okay, I know we've all
had fun, but let's calm down because it's almost seven
point thirty and fellow hip hop fans of the audience,
you know, there is so much more that we didn't
get to today, but we wanted to end here with
our big, big thanks to all the legends of this
(45:34):
genre of hip hop and rap. We found one note
that we thought would just be the perfect.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
One to end on.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
What happened to that letter from the FBI, you may
ask today. It is in the rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, of which NWA is.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
A member, and in a lot of hay has been
made by certain types. I guess that's not rock and roll.
Screw that, it totally is.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Whatever.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Rock and roll is an a MorphOS concept, like you said,
just like punk rock. It doesn't refer to a sound,
It refers to like an attitude and a mentality. And like,
this is so important, you know the fact that they
took this strongly worded letter from the FBI and made
it spun it into marketing.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Gold because it just shows how.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Square the FBI was, And again, like we said at
the top of the show, how quaint it feels now
the thought of the FBI expending any amount.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Of resource on this kind of witch hunt, you know, And.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
I don't know, Ben, do you think Tipper Gore and
her ilk meant well or do you think they were
just trying to shut down poor people?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
I think I think it was probably a half and
half thing. Those are not mutually exclusive motives. People usually,
even people we consider villains, usually see themselves as heroes
and think they're doing the right thing. And that's not
say they're bad people, but they could have. There was
a political calculation, doubtlessly, because you want to cause you
(47:00):
and rally or base around, and in this case, their
cause was misdirected. It did not work out, It did
not address the problems from which this music arose. And
with that, I say we we first, we give our
we give our thanks of course to doctor dre Ice Cube,
DJ Yella mc redden and Easy of n W A
(47:22):
thank you for making this episode possible.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
And thanks to all the incredible artists that have come
out of hip hop, all of the contributions that you've
made to pop culture, to social justice, you know, to
so many aspects that are very very positive, you know,
in American society and global society. I mean, you know,
because hip hop isn't just We're sitting here in Atlanta,
(47:44):
which is like kind of a hotbed of hip hop,
you know, with outcasts and so many incredible artists that
have come yeah exactly that have come out of this city.
But hip hop is a global phenomenon at this point.
You know, it's it's not just American. Everybody loves it,
and it's something that just about anybody, even if that's
not your background, Like in terms of the perspective that's
(48:05):
being described, there's something that you can still take from it.
There's wisdom, you know, the word play, just the just
I don't know, it's wisdom. There really is so much
of that in the lyrics of of truly great hip hop.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
And of course thank you to our our own DJ,
our own doctor Dre, mister Max Williams, thanks to Jonathan
Strickland who is kind of our fbi aka the quizt
Orgar Hoover. Yeah, and thanks to who else Alex Williams
composing this banging tracks, Jeff cot who uh who's on
(48:41):
in person at the office the other way. Yeah, Yeah,
Eve's always a pleasure. Maybe we can get her back
on the show soon and big big thanks to of
course christ Fossio.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Just here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
I guess Tipper Gore, who also made this episode.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Would she ended up going on to do working on
a new show with us?
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Oh cool, we're doing a new show with Eve's Jeff Cookee,
not with Tipper Gore to mine.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Got it? Okay, thank god, We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Box. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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