About a month and a half ago Method Man had a run in with police in Memphis Tennessee. According to police reports Meth decided to move off the sidewalk and start signing autographs for passing motorists. This action needless to say caused a bit of a traffic jam and Memphis Finest was called in to get things moving along. Now the story changes from here. The police say that Meth got unruly and argumentative and kicked off a scuffle.. Hence he had to be subdued with peeper spray. Afterwards he was booked and taken to jail. Folks from Meth's camp said that the police came through and started illin' out and provoked a situation.. Meth spent only a few hours in the slammer.. He was charged with resisting arrest and obstructing traffic..

If Meth's assertions about 'out of control' police is true..it will mark yet another chapter in the long and turbulent history with rap artists and police.. More then a few artists have had some sort of altercation with law enforcement. Historically speaking one of hip hop's founding fathers Afrika Bambaataa was motivated to change his gang bangin' life style after his best friend was shot to death by a Bronx police officer. Bam who was then a leader of the notorious Black Spades began to re channel his energy shortly after the incident.. He formed a social club which we now know as the Universal Zulu Nation.

Interestingly enough, Bam's unfortunate incident was not isolated.. Hip Hop itself was a reaction to all the oppressive tactics being employed by the NYPD during the 70s when they were on a mission to eliminate the Big Apple's youth gangs. Kid slowly gave up gang bangin' and began to do things like Break Dance and participate in other activities associated with hip hop culture. Folks who were there will recall many of the first Zulus were B-Boys.. [Break Boys].. They went around and danced..

Early on a lot of hip hoppers ran into problems with the police on two accounts.. The first was for doing illegal block parties. Many of the early hip hop parties were done at rec centers inside housing projects.. But a large number of them were done in old school yards and parks.. Electricity was often illegally syphoned from street lamps.. More then a few block parties were broken up by the police...

The kids who really caught heat were the break dancers.. The battles between hip hop dancers and police went on from coast to coast.. Kids bringing out flattened card board boxes and strips of linoleum so they could spin on their head caused huge crowds.. The police were always on the b-boys to break it up and move on.. Folks from the Bay Area will recall the huge crowds in the early 80s that used to come up to UC Berkeley to dance.. The campus police were a big nemesis who eventually succeeded in getting the break dancing banned from campus.. The huge crowds which numbered more then 500 moved the act to neighboring Telegraph Ave..There the City of Berkeley's police department got involved and forced the break dancing to stop. The huge crowds continued to frequent the avenue..All over the country ordinances went up making it illegal to break dance.. Many of the ordinances came under the guise of anti-loittering laws and crowd control.. There was an exhibit in New York's Schoumberg Museum that addressed this whole issue. It dealt with censorship within the African American community. The bottom line here is that many a break dancers had run ins with the police.

Finally you have the graf writers who oftentimes took life and limb into their own hands by scaling fences to tag up subways. Of course run ins with the police were inevitable.. Unfortunately the reactions by the police once graf writers were captured weren't always professional. There are many who will tell you that a few good hits with a bully club and maybe a few kicks and punches accompanied the citations the graffiti writers would receive.. Things hit a head in one highly charged incident involving Michael Stewart.. Here was a graf writer who got caught by police.. The story went that he somehow got strangled to death while in the custody of 10 officers.. I tell you the history between hip hoppers and police is a long one..

Over the years police and rappers have clashed during video shoots.. Talk to MC Eiht about how LAPD came through one of his sets and acted the fool. From the looks of things that may have also happened with the group Black Star... It looks like the police were on the scene jamming them up in their recent video for the song 'Definition'.

High visibility and super stardom has meant nothing to the Police.. Talk to Flava Flav who found himself getting jammed up by LAPD.. The entire Wu-Tang Clan found themselves being pulled out of a van and made to lie face down while over zealous SFPD searched them and their van. The Wu-Tang was accused of being bank robbers..No apologies were offered after things were cleared up. Rap Sheet editor Darryl James and rapper Rodney O found themselves the target of police harassment while Darryl was conducting an interview. If I recall Mr. James did an editorial on the incident and actually ran some photos of the incident. Scarface found his friend and body guard being shot to death a few years back after a show somewhere in Lousiana. His partner was supposedly shot in the back by police.

Public Enemy members found themselves being tossed up against the wall and searched several years ago by overzealous NYPD police.. who the night before had made headlines for shooting an unarmed 15 year old Brooklyn youth in the back. This incident I had first hand knowledge, because I was one of the people the police lined up that night. A white patron in a nearby bar called the police saying that a Black man had pulled a gun on him and robbed his beeper.. What he didn't tell police was that a few minutes earlier he had verbally harassed and chased the girl friend of rap artist Son Of Berserk out the bar. He never told the police how he had called her a 'Black Nigger Bitch'.. Nowadays folks would be like ok with the word.. But in '93 the man got stepped to by Beserk of the rap group Son Of Berserk.

What happened was several members of the Bomb Squad, Chuck D and myself pulled up in front the Green Street studios. only to find ourselves surrounded by gun drawing police in squad cars and on horse back.. We were made to line up face front against the wall. We were never told why were being detained.. Producer Eric Saddler kept turning around asking why we were being searched.. One of the eight white officers sneered at him and told him 'shut up and that he better not turn around or he just might get 'itchy'... The officer was gleefully making reference to newspaper headlines about the earlier police shooting. The officer who shot the 15 year old the night before had some sort of itch that caused is gun to go off..

Even after it was made abundantly clear by witnesses that the detainees were members of Public Enemy the police kept everyone lined up.. We were all in the dark and had no idea what was going on.. It wasn't until some white folks who were in one of the studios came out and reconfirmed what 5 other Black people present had noted.. It was after that the police let everyone go.. Folks ripped into the officers and let them know how displeased they were.. Ironically that was the same night that the song '911 Is A Joke' was being recorded.. In fact we were all coming from Tower Records after searching for a record that was later sampled into the song.

2 other highly publicized cases of police and rappers involved the late 2Pac. Ten years ago he was beat down by two Oakland Police officers after he mouthed off to them. Pac was stopped for jay walking and was asked to give his name. When he told the officers his name was 2Pac.. [He was unknown at the time], the officers started laughing and dissin' his name. Pac stood his ground and cursed the officers out. The result was a beat down and 2Pac launching a 10 million dollar law suit against OPD. 2Pac later set off more controversy by depicting him shooting a cop at the end of his video for the song 'trapped'.

The other incident involved 2Pac shooting two off duty police officers in Atlanta Georgia. Again it was a case of Pac being tested and Pac shot back in self defense.. The officers were found to be lying about their initial account of things..

NWA really captured the sentiments of inner city youth when they did the song 'F*%k Tha Police'. Unlike our African American community who don't mind the use of the word 'Nigga'.The song was actually written after Ice Cube was harassed by LAPD. He was driving his car and made to pull over by an officer who was looking for someone to bust. Cube explained that he went home that night and began writing the song.. He called MC Ren and the two chopped it up.. and F The Police was born..

However, police departments all around the country weren't taking kindly to NWA's disparaging song..They apparently didn't want folks getting too comfortable with a popular act yelling 'F&%K Tha Police'. When NWA would perform, police departments would fax each other warning each other that this incinderary act was in town. There was a lot of pressure put on the group not to perform the song. In many places they didn't. I know when they did their first two shows in Oakland.. The song was not performed. Things blew up while doing a concert in Detroit. NWA attempted to do the song, only to find themselves being bum rushed off the stage by 20 off duty Detroit Police Officers who weren't havin' it.

The NWA situation was important for a couple of reasons. First the group got international attention when the FBI issued a letter condemning the group's song. This help bring the police brutality issue to the forefront. But it also marked a point where police departments were publicly making it known that they were paying close attention to rap artists and their lyrics. It wasn't long before police departments started getting involved by offering their recommendations to venues as to who should and shouldn't be performing..

Here in the Bay Area that has been especially true. Police departments housed in cities like Vallejo and Mountainview have yielded tremendous influence in determining who gets to be on the bill of certain concerts.. It's all done in the name of safety. Presently it's all but impossible for a Bay Area rap artist to do a large scale concert.. What makes all this so scary is that these police departments share information about rap artists..They have dossiers about rappers and possible gang affiliations. The Oakland Police Department has a book that was written by another officer out of Utah that chronicles and goes into great detail the evolution of 'gangsta rap.. I saw the book with my own eyes.. and unfortunately it ain't something you can buy.. From what I saw the book was off the hook in terms of how detailed it was... The police and rap thing is on a whole other level right now..

A few years ago Police Officers in Michigan actually got together and recorded a rap song blasting their criminal counterparts..Some police departments like the one in Vallejo listen to rap tapes as they're released and have actually arrested folks who were connected to crimes that they foolishly rapped about.. talk to rap star Mac Dre and members of his Romper Room Crew.. In Mountainview the Police department came down on some Bay Area local artists who mentioned a menacing officer by name..Mac Dre maintains to this day it was the fact that he mentioned an overzealous sergeant by name in one of his rap songs that he found himself in all sorts of trouble.. He wound up serving 4 years for a bank robbery that many said he did not commit.

With all this being said and bearing in mind this is only the tip of the ice berg.. I'm surprised that more artists aren't more involved to help quell this steady rise of police brutality..Who knows maybe we're too concerned about being Pimps Plays and Hustlas, drinking crystal and moet and calling ourselves nigga to be concerned about such 'trivial' things like police brutality.

It's something to think about..Let me know what you think by posting on our:Strictly Hip Hop Message Boards...

written by Davey D
c 1998