The impact of one song on the black American community is unravelled in this episode of the series that invites a closer listen.

NWA’s F*** tha Police was first released in 1988. It's a bold imagining, where the tables are turned and a roll call of police harassment is aired in a courtroom where five young black men hold the power. The song started an institutional and media-led fight against gangster rap and crowned the rappers “the world’s most dangerous group”.

Scenes of protest, community organising, and thoughts of those who have a relationship with the song fuse with archive, news reports and bustling city soundscapes. The song’s form and codes, layered under the simplicity of the lyrics, peel back and reverberate with the truth of lived experience of those joined together in joy and anger.

Interviews with writer Nikole Hannah-Jones (of 1619), music writer Hanif Abdurraqib, Black Lives Matter activist Melina Abdullah and academic Donna Murch, who unpick the song’s resonance, power and continued prominence as the soundtrack of protest throughout the United States, since the Los Angeles uprising of 1992, Ferguson in 2014 and most recently during the George Floyd protests.

Produced by Shanida Scotland with creative associate James T Green
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 Show less