Is Fuck Da Police Really Funny? Yes.

I was listening to Fuck Da Police (any of the songs on the album will work, but this one is especially wonderful) and couldn't help but laugh. That's pretty weird once you get to thinkin' about it. I mean, I don't think the NWA really wrote Fuck Da Police with the intention of humoring long-haired, hippy wannabe, middle-class white boys. Maybe it's the context. Maybe the idea of listening to something like the NWA for the same class where you read Lolita is an ironic juxtaposition that can't not be funny. Or maybe it's because I remember my older sister and brother listening to Gangsta rap in the early nineties and acting as if they had any idea what the hell the rappers were talking about.

Once you really get to listening though, it's not funny. There's not much humor in the very sad, and very real, situations that they are rapping about. Who doesn't remember Rodney King? This is serious shit, and we all know that. And yet we continue to chuckle innocently.

It's almost as if we don't really think that they are justified to say these things, and so it's laughable, and, in turn, censorable. I think this fits in nicely with the Wire (like a few other people have noted). We've been so conditioned into viewing criminals and the police as a black and white affair that we fail to realize that there are good and bad people involved on both sides.

I don't know anyone from Compton, but I bet if I did they wouldn't think Fuck Da Police was funny.