from the LP Straight Outta Compton, Ruthless Records, 1988I can still remember the look on my mom’s face: having borrowed this cassette from a friend in my class, I decided that the show couldn’t wait until arriving home, so I eagerly popped it in the car’s tape player and let this roll---needless to say, mom wasn’t amused, already fielding my (and every other young kid in Florida’s) growing affection for the infamous 2 Live Crew. That said, she was smart enough to know that reacting strongly would just encourage me more, so to her credit, she actually let this entire song finish before the tape got yanked---she was probably gonna try and make it through the whole ride just to prove a point, but when “Fuck Tha Police” came on after this, it was all over, fast. I remember her looking at me with a puzzled expression on her face and asking, “so, do think these people are cool because they talk like that?” I denied it, knowing full well however that hearing people say “pussy-ass motherfucker” was deeply magnetic to young boys, including myself, and I spent hours rapping along with this tape in my room. My folks would never have admitted it, but their ire wasn’t really about the cuss words (hell, the violent movies they love contained all the same lingo), it was the fact that black people were saying them & potentially having influence over their kid. Looking back, it wasn’t so much that this strain of early gansta-rap put any new ideas in my head or anything (they were already there…), but it most certainly validated some of my angst. Listening to this today, it’s impressive how fresh the beats still sound, even if the gratuitous rhymes now make me giggle instead of pump my fist.
