"April 29th was Power to the People, and we might just see a sequel!"-20 Year Anniversary of the L.A. Riots

"To get some respect we had to tear this muthafucka up!"

-Ice Cube "We Had to Tear This Mothafucka Up" 1992

"It's jumpin' off in Compton so I gots to get my loot on.

And come up on me some furniture or som'n,

got a VCR in the back of my car that I ganked from the Slawson Swap Meet,

and muthafuckas bet'not try to stop me!"

-Dr. Dre "The Day the Niggaz Took Over" 1992

"That's what they told us today, in other words, you still a slave.

No matter how much money you got you still ain't shit!"

-Unknown black man live from the L.A.Riots 4-29-92

     Today marks exactly 20 years since one of the most significant events of the late 20th century. It's also a Sunday, and while I'd like to think the anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots falling on the Lord's resting day is a sign we won't need another uprising of this magnitude in 2012, the recent killing of Trayvon Martin and other race/hate related incidents might be saying otherwise.  If justice is served and George Zimmermann is convicted, peace will prevail.  But if that doesn't happen there's a chance Florida will find itself in the midst of what California experienced 20 years ago.  In acknowledgement of that moment in time when people of my generation served some serious notice to America, I've posted a piece of what I wrote about it in the "Rebirth and Death" chapter from my book Sex Time And Radio Vol. 1 & 2: Blueprint of a Radio Star. At the end of this blog are links to YouTube clips of two songs that dealt with the historic event.  This revolution was not only televised, it was documented on CDs that sold over 6 million units combined!---M Chapman 

  

With Death Certificate, Ice Cube was clearly challenging young blacks to reach beyond what we thought was possible for us.  But despite his intentions, he and the album were slammed by the mainstream media and labeled as racist.  The bulk of the complaints were about the songs “No Vaseline” and “Black Korea”.  “No Vaseline” was actually Cube’s response to NWA, who had dissed him after he left the group on their EP 100 Miles and Runnin’ and their album Efil4zaggiN (“Niggaz4life” spelled backwards).  It was easily the hardest diss song in rap history, and was the most popular cut on the album when it was first released.  Cube blamed the group’s white Jewish manager Jerry Heller for breaking them up, and basically called NWA hypocrites by saying “you can’t be the nigga 4 life crew with a white Jew tellin’ you what to do!”  That line, along with the proclamation to “get rid of that devil real simple, put a bullet in his temple”, created cries that Ice Cube was anti-Semitic.  The warning in “Black Korea” to “pay respect to the black fist, or we’ll burn your store right down to a crisp”, and its use of dialog from Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, created cries of him being racist against Asians.  Some radio stations around the country, including WGCI in Chicago, refused to play any Ice Cube songs.  Billboard magazine suggested that record stores should “protest the sentiments” contained in the album, while the national chain store Camelot Records refused to sell it.  According to Joel McIver’s biography Ice Cube Attitude, “the state of Oregon made it illegal to display Ice Cube’s image in a retail outlet” and “Black Korea” and “No Vaseline” were actually taken off of the album in the UK.  All of this was because Ice Cube was supposedly spreading a message of hate.  The album also contained several pieces of dialog from members of the Nation of Islam, as well as an endorsement of the organization in the liner notes.  This newfound affiliation with Minister Farrakhan’s feared group definitely added to the mainstream media’s conclusions about Cube. 

     But many of these media folks were fooling themselves with their own arrogance.  Despite all the talk of banning Ice Cube, the song “Steady Mobbin” became a major hit.  Although it only reached #30 on the Billboard black singles chart, it was easily the hottest song out at the time with the main rap audience.  Plus Death Certificate spent 3 weeks in the #1 spot on the black album chart, reached #2 on the pop chart, and sold well over a million copies.  As Cube put it in the album’s opening track, “I’m platinum bitch and I didn’t have to sell out!” because as the title suggested he was “The Wrong Nigga to Fuck Wit”.

     One of the most common aspects of American society is its ability to denounce those who deliver bitter messages while completely ignoring the fucked up conditions within the society that make the messages necessary in the first place.  Ice Cube was showing a genuine concern for his own people, not a hatred of others.  Those who argued against the song “Black Korea” either ignored or were unaware of an altercation in March of 1991 between a 15-year-old black girl named Latasha Harlins and a Korean store owner in L.A. named Soon Ja Du.  According to the transcript of court case People v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Du saw Harlins place a bottle of orange juice in her backpack and assumed she was attempting to steal it.  Harlins actually had the money to pay for it, but since Du didn’t see it, she snatched the teenager’s backpack away. Harlins responded by hitting Du three times, knocking her to the ground, and then backing away.  Du reacted to this by throwing a stool at the teen, after which Harlins picked up the juice bottle, threw it on the counter, and walked away to leave the store.  Du then grabbed a gun from under the counter and fatally shot Harlins in the back of her head.  On trial, Soon Ja Du claimed self-defense and that she feared for her life.  She was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter with a recommendation for 16 years in prison, but amazingly, Judge Joyce Karlin reduced the sentence to five years probation, 400 hours of community service and a $500 fine.  African-Americans in Los Angeles were outraged, and the tension expressed in the song “Black Korea” had a lot to do with this incident. 

     Ice Cube’s words might have been harsh, but he was expressing the real feelings of people in his community.  In fact, he had been warning about the tension in black neighborhoods for his whole career up to that point, especially the tension in South Central L.A.  The same could be said for Ice-T and NWA, as well as Public Enemy and other rappers.  Most of their observations about the feelings of the main rap audience were dismissed as annoying rhetoric by the American establishment.  But on April 29th of 1992, the country got a major wake up call. 

     In March of 1991, a black man named Rodney King was severely beaten by four Los Angeles police officers.  A black man getting beat by cops wasn’t new, but this time someone caught it on camera.  The video tape was shown on TV throughout the country for months and the officers went on trial.  Everyone expected them to be sent to jail, yet despite the obvious evidence, the officers were found not guilty in court.  Not guilty.  They beat the living crap out of this man, everyone saw it on TV, but that was “not guilty”?  The officers smiled and hugged when they got off, but if America thought so little of black men that they could beat us nearly to death just because they had so-called “authority” they were in for a serious surprise.  Black folks in L.A. took to the streets and started a vicious riot that lasted damn near a week.  They burned down stores (including many Korean owned ones) and took whatever items they could get.  Hispanics felt they were even bigger targets of police brutality than blacks were, so they joined in too. 
     For people around my age, riots were something that we saw on old documentaries about the 1960s or read about in history classes.  But this wasn’t a book or a movie, this motherfucker was real!  Though I wasn’t anywhere near Los Angeles, I understood how the people out there felt because I’d been hearing about their environment in rap songs for five years.  Hell, I woulda went out there and tore some shit up too if I’d been there!  Now all of a sudden the mainstream media, who had dissed so many rappers for so long, wanted to talk to Ice Cube, Ice-T, Chuck D, and anybody else they could find connected to the rap audience.  Ice Cube and Ice-T (who would have his own controversy over the song “Cop Killer” a few months later) were both obviously thinking “we told you so”.  In fact, Cube’s next album, The Predator, came out later that year.  My favorite song on it, “We Had to Tear This Motherfucker Up”, was specifically about the L.A. riots.  He described ways of getting revenge on each of the four officers, but what stood out the most was the line “I told you it would happen and you heard it, read it, but all you could call me was anti-Semitic!”  The album’s first single, “Wicked”, also had a line that said “April 29th was power to the people, and we might just see a sequel!” 
Read more in paperback or Kindle ebook by clicking here: http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Time-Radio-Vol-Blueprint/dp/1463716966/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

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