October 22nd, 2007
9. KRS-One, "Sound Of Da Police"
KRS-One's solo career-making screed boasts one of the most heavily sampled and recognizable hooks in hip-hop history; the next time you're at a show, try throwing out a "Woop woop!" and you're bound to hear someone echo back, "That's the sound of da police!" Besides clever onomatopoeia, the track offers a convincing side-by-side comparison of today's police "officer" with an "overseer" of field slaves: "The overseer rode around the plantation / The officer is off patrolling all the nation / The overseer could stop you what you're doing / The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing / The overseer had the right to get ill / And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill / The officer has the right to arrest / And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest."
Low-budget KRS video, because The Man wouldn't give him any more cash
10. Alkaline Trio, "Cop"
Like N.W.A, Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba reacts to authority with a mixture of braggadocio and anger, sneering—like all young punks—at the kind of person who might choose a life in law enforcement to begin with ("Maybe as a baby you dropped your rattle"). It's funny and fierce, and one of the best songs on one of pop-punk's semi-lost treasures, the Trio's debut album, Goddamnit!
Alkaline Trio live in 2006
11. Le Tigre, "Bang! Bang!"
Le Tigre was known mostly for crafting delicious dance-punk anthems spiked with feminist sloganeering, but "Bang! Bang!" isn't an attempt to move hips as well as minds: It's a bluntly brutal protest song. Citing the wrongful killings by NYPD officers of Amadou Diallo in 1999 and Patrick Dorismond in 2000, leader Kathleen Hanna amps up the rage and bile that once fueled her band Bikini Kill: "Who gave them the fucking right / to run around like they own the night?" she screeches passionately, then adds, "Bang, bang, daddy, I want you dead / Bring me Giuliani's head." The song's nod to Joe Cuba's warm-fuzzy boogaloo anthem "Bang Bang" doesn't make Hanna's punches any less pulverizing.
Bad-ass photo plus Le Tigre song equals gold
12. Rick James, "Mr. Policeman"
A fugitive at age 16 after going AWOL from the Navy, Rick James got off on the wrong foot with the long arm of the law. His most infamous crime and incarceration wouldn't come until the '90s, but in 1981 he had already stored up plenty of hatred for cops. "Mr. Policeman"—a track off Street Songs, the album that yielded his biggest hit, "Super Freak"—is a loping, reggae-flavored harangue against the 5-0. "It's a shame / It's a disgrace / Every time you show your face / somebody dies," James cries over some uncharacteristically restrained funk. "Mr. Policeman / I saw you shoot my good friend down / He was just having fun." Of course, James' idea of fun was burning women with crack pipes, so his opinion might be a little suspect.
13. Dead Kennedys, "Police Truck"
14. Black Flag "Police Story"
'80s hardcore is an almost bottomless repository of anti-police songs. Some are acidly hilarious, such as Dead Kennedys' "Police Truck," in which Jello Biafra adopts the persona of an officer of the peace—then rakes cops over the coals for abuse of power, brutality, and rape via lines like "Tonight's the night that we've got the truck / We're goin' downtown, gonna beat up drunks." But there's nothing funny about Black Flag's "Police Story." Fronting an outfit whose shows were regularly raided by the cops, Henry Rollins—in one of the high points of his checkered tenure with Black Flag—sums up the era's tension savagely and succinctly: "Understand we're fighting a war we can't win / They hate us, we hate them / We can't win."
A use of Police Truck that Jello never imagined
15. "Police On My Back," The Clash
"Police On My Back," from 1980's Sandinista!, represents one of music's rare occurrences: a cover outdoing the original. Originally by Eddy Grant's British reggae/R&B outfit The Equals, "Police On My Back" speaks to the disenfranchisement The Clash continually expressed. Here, police harassment is a daily threat; against a siren guitar, Mick Jones and Joe Strummer sing, "I've been running Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday / what have I done?"
Killer live rendition of Police On My Back
16. Body Count, "Cop Killer"
A mediocre metal song from a mediocre metal band fronted by Ice-T, "Cop Killer" caught the ears of the then-fledgling alternative nation when Body Count played it at the inaugural Lollapalooza in 1991, the same year that Rodney King was beaten by LAPD cops. By the time it was put to tape and released on the band's debut the following year, the rest of the country had an opinion about it, including the first George Bush, Dan Quayle, and Tipper Gore, all of whom joined a chorus of protests that eventually led to the song being removed from the album. The first-person fantasy featuring a sawed-off shotgun, a "long-assed knife," and an intro that announces, "I'd like to take a pig out here in this parking lot and shoot 'em in their motherfucking face," is plenty incendiary, but the music isn't nearly as imaginative.
Not much to look at, but if you want to hear the song…
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