Back in 1988, the legendary Los Angeles-based Hip Hop group N.W.A. released the controversial protest song “F### Tha Police.” The Straight Outta Compton track directly shined a spotlight on police brutality and racial profiling.
Fast forward to the 2020s, police violence is still a serious issue across the nation. For example, the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sparked one of the largest protest movements in human history. N.W.A. founding member Ice Cube told The Breakfast Club he believes the entertainment business is partially to blame for aggressive cops.
“I think Hollywood is [complicit] in this too. They done put out so many images that teach the police how to do us. If you’re a 12-year-old kid watching TV and you grow up, you probably done seen hours and hours of how Black people are treated in this country… So by the time you become a cop, it’s already etched in your brain, from watching these dumb-ass shows – ‘Oh, this is how you treat them,’” offered Ice Cube. “Hollywood is helping the racism flourish.”
After Charlamagne Tha God questioned Cube if he regretted N.W.A. being responsible for showing the public how police officers dealt with African-Americans in a combative and unlawful way, the star of the cop-centered movie series Ride Along and 21 Jump Street responded, “No, not at all. We were youngsters trying to figure it out, just trying to point out what we were going through. When you look up, everybody’s going through the same thing. That’s why that music caught on.”
The radio show interview also included Ice Cube discussing his highly-publicized Contract With Black America which became a political news item in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign. Cube was criticized at the time for associating himself with then-Republican President Donald Trump’s Platinum Plan and reportedly turning down the opportunity to speak with then-Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris about his CWBA prior to the election.
“We heard from [President Joe Biden’s senior advisor] Cedric Richmond a couple of times. We’re still waiting for a follow-up on some things we were trying to get set up,” said Ice Cube on The Breakfast Club about the status of the CWBA. “We’re doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, out of the public’s eye because things get misconstrued, people chime in when they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
The Big3 basketball league co-founder added, “The first half of the Contract With Black America, when the election was going on, was really focused on the public sector. Now, since the election, we’re focused on the private sector. We got some interesting things we’re going to announce as soon as they fully develop.”
Last year, Cedric Richmond pushed back on Ice Cube’s public statements claiming the Biden-Harris campaign was uninterested in speaking with the Hip Hop mogul about his Contract With Black America before ballots were cast. Richmond said, “The offer to stay engaged was not, ‘We’ll talk to you after the election.’ It went like this: ‘Here’s my cell number. Anything else you want to talk about on this plan or anything you think we need to talk about further, just pick up the phone and call.’”