N.W.A (and its spin-offs) spent decades promoting anti-social behavior among poor Black youth across the US. I personally know several
brothers who got into criminality and gang culture attempting to model
the lifestyle and mentality portrayed by the members of N.W.A.
Now, the Western media is going to repackage these individuals who’ve
enriched themselves on the blood of our people and the subversion of our
community, and sell them to a whole new generation of Black youth as a
Revolutionary group who showed the world how the Hood was suffering in
the 80s and 90s.
Who the fuck did N.W.A. make aware of the suffering in the Hood?!?!
The people who were suffering in the hood already knew they were suffering, then didn’t need N.W.A. to tell them.
The White Elites, corrupt Cops, Racist politicians, parasitic
businessmen, and all the other elements of society who created and
profit from the suffering in the Hood already knew about it, they were
the sources of the suffering in the Hood.
The White
working-class who didn’t know didn’t give a fuck back then, and they
don’t give a fuck now, and they’ve never given a fuck about any point in
history; they didn’t give a fuck when the government was exterminating
the Natives and enslaving our ancestors, they didn’t give a fuck about
lynching, they didn’t give a fuck about the government taking jobs and
flooding the Hood with drugs, they don’t give a fuck about the genocidal
incarceration rates we endure now. THEY DON’T GIVE A FUCK!!!
So, who the fuck did N.W.A. enlighten about our plight in the
Hood…no-fucking-body that’s who. They just profited from selling
Poverty Porn, and Black Gangsta Fantasies to White Youth, while fueling
and glamorizing the internalized oppression going on in my housing
project, and poor Black communities across the nation.
So, fuck N.W.A!
They were as Revolutionary with their “art” as Steppin Fetchit was with his.
In fact, N.W.A contributed to derailing the real Revolutionary Hip Hop,
and the reawakening Black Consciousness in the mid-80s and early 90s.
As mainstream White publications and television obsessed over N.W.A. and
their clones, the truly Revolutionary Hip Hop, and responsible artist
were ignored by all but a few dedicated Hip Hop fans and supporters.
I remember listening to N.W.A. as a grade school kid and being
entertained, but I stopped fucking with them when I saw how the Hood was
consuming and replicating their “message.”
N.W.A. will go down
in history as a treasonous formation, one that gave legitimacy to the
criminalization of generations of poor Black youth. They were and still
are an effective tool of our true enemies, and they have been well
rewarded for their contributions to the Systems, Agendas, and
Institutions of White Domination.
If you are going see that NWA – Straight Outta Compton -The Movie,
or know some youth who are going to see the movie, see it with them,
then give them the real history, and discuss the real cultural and
social impact of N.W.A. Help the youth to analyze the propaganda and
understand why history is so often rewritten. Then sit down with those
youth and do a comparative analysis of the music of that era, play them
some Boogie Down Productions, Poor Righteous Teachers, King Sun, X Clan, Brand Nubian, The Coup,
and many other artist that were contemporaries of N.W.A.; and ask those
youth why N.W.A. has endured and these artist are not household names
across America like N.W.A. is. They will see that it is not because
N.W.A. had better music than these other artist, so it must be something
else.
We can use this movie, this sick piece of propaganda as a
learning tool, and work to make it backfire on those who are trying
rewrite the history and impact of NWA, or we can allow yet another piece
of propaganda outta Hollywood mindfuck our youth.
Conscious Hip Hop is the only Hip Hop, everything else is Pop Music.
