#3: Tupac Shakur
Pac built a Gangsta-Rap legacy on East Coast-West Coast feuding and eventually cemented his legendary status in the industry by paying for it with his own life when he was shot outside of a Las Vegas hotel in 1996. Shakur’s last significant paycheck came when he landed the role for Detective Jake Rodriguez in the film Gang Related, which was released a year after his death. Ironically, one Las Vegas police officer has gone on record to say that the on-screen cop’s last words were “F*ck you” in response to police asking him who shot him.
#2: Ice Cube
O’Shea Jackson, also known as Ice Cube, was a founding member of the hip-hop group N*ggas With Attitude. The NWA were pioneers in the hip-hop industry for their invention of the Gangsta Rap genre and have been as destructive or more to the black community as anything else in modern times in doing so. It wasn’t only the glamorization of street-gang lifestyle, drug sales, and black on black violence – NWA normalized and encouraged attacks against police officers with lyrics like “A young n*gga on a warpath, and when I’m finished it’s gonna be a bloodbath of cops dying in LA”.
Of course, Ice Cube would go on to completely sell out his own hateful side’s views on police officers by playing Internal Affairs Investigator Kyle Timpkins in the movie Rampart, as well as a stereotypically belligerent police Captain in 21 Jump Street. Cube’s hypocrisy is alive and well with his latest track self-described to be a “F*ck the Police of 2017”.
#1: Ice-T
As the front man of the band Body Count, Tracey Lauren Marrow, released the single Cop Killer In 1992. In the absence of any real lyrical talent, Ice-T went for shock and awe instead. The four-minute song mused of killing “pigs” with a 12-gauge shotgun, slitting police throats with a knife, and berating their grieving police families afterwards. Cop Killer was apparently the perfect resume builder for Ice-T to land the role of Detective Odafin Tutuola on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. That’s Hollyweird for you.
Summary:
Most of the list is occupied by rappers whose finances depend on their ability to gloat about murders, drug dealing, intimidating, stealing, and even raping women. Why wouldn’t they be willing to sell out and play a cop in a movie or TV show if it’s a paycheck. For the record, I don’t dislike Hip-Hop culture because I don’t see any talent in Hip-Hop as an art form. Dictation is a skill. Doing it with rhythm and rhyme is even more challenging. I’ll even say that some of the rappers on this list are talented actors. Talent is not the issue. As a real cop – not the kind made on a Hollywood movie set – I dislike Hip-Hop culture because Hip-Hop culture despises me.
