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The True Story of N.W.A. Playing “Fuck Tha Police” Live in Detroit

By Steve Knopper

In the summer of 1989 in Detroit, N.W.A. made it through some 30 seconds of "Fuck Tha Police" before apparent gunshots went off in the crowd at Joe Louis Arena. Prior to that, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E and the rest had played their signature anthem exactly one time on stage— at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim the previous spring. The group heard the shots and took off, only to run backstage into a line of cops, who threw them to the ground, handcuffed them and hauled them away. It's a dramatic rebellion story that prefigures this era of anti-police-brutality protests, but the way it's told in the group's 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton isn't exactly true.

"'We're all running together and getting caught and getting thrown'—I guess that's done for Hollywood," says N.W.A.'s DJ Yella, who was on stage at the time. "We didn't get arrested. All that commotion and we ended up getting a ticket, like $100 or something like that."

In the film, Ice Cube gives a stirring speech to introduce the song: "This is N.W.A., we do what the fuck we want to do, we say what the fuck we want to say" and leads the 20,000-some fans in a middle-finger salute before gunshots ring out. In real life, according to people at the show, all it took to start the song was a brief flash of eye contact between Cube and Dre on stage. And those gunshots from the crowd weren’t really gunshots. "All of a sudden you hear bap, bap, bap, bap, bap. Guys are running, and guys are trying to storm the stage. And, of course, our security guys are fighting the guys who had stormed the stage," recalls Atron Gregory, the group's tour manager at the time. "Turns out it was the cops, and they had lit off some cherry bombs to create chaos."

"I'm the person that was literally two feet away from the police when they lit the fireworks, or the firecrackers," says DJ Speed, who performed with the group on stage. "It was a crazy thing."

Because the police responded to “Fuck Tha Police” so quickly and forcefully, the film strongly suggests that, somehow, officers had the authority to tell hip-hop groups what they could and couldn’t say or play on stage. But that’s not quite the case. In fact, the restriction came from N.W.A.’s inner circle. The late Eazy-E’s manager, Jerry Heller, agreed in pre-tour negotiations with Darryll Brooks, the tour’s promoter, that the band would be fined $25,000 if it played the song.

Why? Brooks, Heller and the band’s agent, Jerry Ade, feared the song “was not going to be palatable” to conservative localities. “When you go to the Bible Belt, to the Midwest, they don't allow sexual gyrating postures on stage," Brooks recalls. In his 2006 autobiography Ruthless , the late Heller explained how the police came to enforce the contract: “Insurance carriers required police security as a condition of issuing a policy. No police, no policy. No policy, no concert. So Detroit police threatened to boycott those fuck-the-police motherfuckers, N.W.A.”

Although he wasn’t present in Detroit, Sir Jinx, a producer who also performed with the group, says police had an agenda to intimidate N.W.A.’s mostly young, African-American fans. "They were just being bullies," he says. "It was a show to the audience that they were in control."

And so on August 6, 1989, many of the 20,000 fans in Detroit started chanting “Fuck Tha Police,” so N.W.A. called an audible and played it anyway. Brooks was working in an office somewhere in the arena when he heard the chant, followed by DJ Yella's familiar opening beat drop. Cops were everywhere, Brooks says, because it was a "'rap show'—put that in quotes—so everybody was looking for marijuana." He ran towards the stage, and soon "every police officer in the building starts rushing the stage out of nowhere. It looked like the Battle of the Bulge."

According to Straight Outta Compton, plainclothes police gradually made their way to the side of the stage during the performance, where they looked on menacingly. In real life, Gregory recalls, N.W.A. had its own security guards posted on the sides of the stage, and once the police arrived, the two sides began to tussle. The movie got one key detail right, according to people who were there: When the group heard the bap, bap, bap, they panicked and fled. “For that 15 or 20 minutes, it was white-hot,” Brooks says. “You can imagine guys running offstage and plainclothes guys running from the venue, on the floor, trying to get over the barrier to catch these guys who were saying ‘Fuck Tha Police.’”

In Gregory’s account, N.W.A., after running from the stage, removed their hats and reversed their jackets to hide logos and be more anonymous. They boarded a limousine to the hotel a mile or two away, and everybody else in the group’s entourage walked unassumingly past the police on horseback. MC Ren's recollection is different: "Me and Dre were together, we ran backstage. We ran out the door, and once we looked out, it was like, 'All right,' and we turned around and went back in the building. Everybody was like, 'Back into the dressing room.' The police were in there trying to give citations, some bullshit like that." DJ Yella wound up alone in the street. "We went all different ways. I ran into the parking lot," he says. "I walked back to the hotel." DJ Speed left with the late Eric "Eazy-E" Wright and Eazy's security guard Big Ron.

The cops first wound up backstage, where they tussled with the first rappers they could find—in LL Cool J's dressing room. (Also on the bill that night: De La Soul, Too $hort and Slick Rick.) "So LL's bodyguards are fighting the police!" Gregory recalls. The scene was so stressful that Brooks, the promoter, felt a spike in blood pressure and asked a runner to take him to the emergency room. (He was okay, and returned to the show, which still had two acts left.)

Afterward, Gregory returned to the hotel. He handed N.W.A.'s production manager a briefcase full of cash from the show as well as all the plane tickets back to LA. He called the bus driver to check on the two cases full of guns the group carried on the road. They tried to drive the buses into Canada, "just in case something happened," but police arrived shortly after that.

Gregory called a cab for the airport, ending up at another hotel two blocks away. He contacted Eazy-E via walkie-talkie, who verified everything was okay. Police chatted amiably with the band about the Detroit Pistons and sports. Ice Cube once told an interviewer that, "They corralled us, arrested us all, and all they wanted was damn autographs for their daughters and sons."

Four years ago, when members of the group reunited in Detroit (and played "Fuck Tha Police"), local cops provided a high-speed escort, "like we were the president or something," Yella says. In the Black Lives Matter era, "Fuck Tha Police" has evolved from a too-dangerous-to-be-performed anthem to a timely Spotify hit with 157 million plays. "I've been seeing people on social media playing it and people having their own signs and writing it on buildings," MC Ren says. "It's unfortunate why the song keeps popping up and is as relevant as it is. I don't know why we never played it. We had so many other songs. We could just do this other shit."

Back in 1989, did promoters take the $25,000 “Fuck Tha Police” fine from N.W.A’s cut? “To the best of my knowledge,” Brooks recalls, “yes, we did.”

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Sep 04, 2015 Films & TV 0

Spolier Alert: Straight Outta Compton

Like many of you i watched nwa ‘s film straight outta compton which came out in cinema’s a couple weeks ago, i loved it and since then i have started listening to their songs again and watching videos of some of their past show’s online. i came across some interesting facts about what actually happened in some of the films major scenes, they are quite different from what the film portrays..

One of the movies most dramatic scenes takes place in Detroit in 1989 during a concert, NWA were told not to play their famous song “F*ck Tha Police” , The group play it anyway, stirring up the crowd.  During their performance explosions and gunshots are heard as undercover police storm the stage.  NWA are chased off stage by the police who arrest them outside the venue in front of fans, this kicks off a riot in Detroit.

I had a look into what actually happened that day, the real story is actually a little different.

I understand that Straight Outta Compton is a hollywood movie and it is only based on true stories, they need to make the film more dramatic.

In reality the group agreed with their promoter that they wouldn’t sing the song during the tour as police were everywhere.  One night they had a falling-out with their promotor and decided in-spite of their agreement they would sing the song.  So during their gig at Joe Louis Arena they played it and during their performance police rushed the stage and throwing firecrackers, they did intend on arresting the group in front of the crowd to make a point that you can’t say “F*ck the police” and get away with it but the group fled the stage as they believed the fire crackers were real gunshots and they were too much of an easy target.  

“If we wouldn’t have heard those pops – which sounded like gunshots, but they said some kids were popping firecrackers – if we wouldn’t have heard that shit, we wouldn’t have ran,” Ice Cube said in an interview. “Yo, when I hear shots, I’m gone. Because you can’t miss a target with a spotlight.”

“They started the trouble,” he said. “We only had one more verse to go and that song would have been over. Kids didn’t go kill police.”

The group fled to their hotel rooms, later on the police arrested them in the lobby but only so they could get autographs for their friends and kids. No one in the group was charged. 

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The famous 1989 Detroit concert by N.W.A, then and now

Detroit plays a supporting role in “Straight Outta Compton” in the re-creation of a famous 1989 concert appearance by N.W.A.

In it, the rappers are warned before taking the stage at Joe Louis Arena not to perform the controversial anthem “F--- tha Police.” One very stern officer says, “Just watch yourself.”

The group makes a stand for free speech and starts performing the song anyway. Then Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and the other members are chased out of the arena by the cops and thrown into a police van.

But movies tend to condense and reshape events. What was written at the time about the N.W.A incident in Detroit?

The 1989 Detroit Free Press story on the event said nine adults and nine juveniles were arrested on misdemeanor charges outside the concert. It described a heavy police presence around Joe Louis and quoted Executive Deputy Police Chief James Bannon as saying N.W.A began to perform “F--- tha Police” that night even though the promoters agreed it wouldn’t be included.

“The song was not finished and band representatives couldn’t be reached to explain why,” said the story. An Olympia Arenas executive was quoted as saying the concert “seemed like a lot of the rap shows we’ve done ... nothing extraordinary.”

A few months later, a 1989 story about N.W.A by London’s Guardian newspaper reported that the police stormed the stage to prevent N.W.A from doing the profanely titled song. “The band was escorted to their hotel by more officers, one of whom reportedly said, ‘We just wanted to show the kids that you can’t say ‘F--- the police’ in Detroit.’ ”

Early this month, the Daily Beast did a fact check of “Straight Outta Compton” and presented another wrinkle to the story, drawing from a memoir by former manager Jerry Heller (portrayed in the film by Paul Giamatti).

“The members of N.W.A. were hustled away from the arena by their security and whisked off to the safety of their hotel rooms — only to be arrested later when they sneaked down to the lobby to meet girls, according to Heller.”

The concert scenes for “Straight Outta Compton” were shot at the Los Angeles Sports Arena and the Santa Monica (Calif.) Civic Auditorium.

Some filming took place in Detroit for the Joe Louis Arena scene, according to a Universal representative.

Contact Detroit Free Press writer Julie Hinds: 313-222-6427 or [email protected].

The Painful, Long, And Lasting Legacy Of “Fuck Tha Police”

The new biopic Straight Outta Compton attempts to humanize a gangsta rap group that gave young black America a profanity-laden battle cry: "You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge."

BuzzFeed News Reporter

In the long-awaited N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton , a young Ice Cube (played by O’Shea Jackson Jr.) sits at a press conference — long ringlets of his jheri curl hanging out the back of a black cap — and fixes his eyes on a reporter who’s just suggested that his group make music that glamorizes gangs and drugs.

“Our art,” Jackson Jr. (the rapper’s real-life son) replies in perfect Cube cadence, “is a reflection of our reality."

Cube’s reality involved being harassed by cops in Torrance, California, in the late ’80s while N.W.A recorded their major label debut, Straight Outta Compton . The rappers were profiled as gangbangers and forced to lie on the sidewalk, their food slapped out of their hands.

It was a common occurrence, and one that inspired Cube to write the song “Fuck tha Police.”

“It was just built up,” DJ Yella said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “We're standing out there in Torrance, at a studio, and that's how they was. You know, ‘What are we doing here in this city?!’ It was crazy.”

Onscreen, Cube’s genius strikes immediately. Eazy-E, formerly the badass, Uzi-wielding dope man, is the one who’s hesitant. Can they really get away with saying the words Cube just penned?

"Fuck the police / Coming straight from the underground / A young n***a got it bad 'cause I'm brown / And not the other color so police think / They have the authority to kill a minority / Fuck that shit, 'cause I ain't the one / For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun / To be beating on, and thrown in jail / We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell / Fucking with me 'cause I'm a teenager / With a little bit of gold and a pager / Searching my car, looking for the product / Thinking every n***a is selling narcotics."

N.W.A's debut album.

“It was more than just a song that was insulting the police. It was a revenge fantasy, like Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino,” Cube told BuzzFeed News. “I think that's really what made people feel scared [like] we was really wanting to fight the police, you know? It's just one of them things where that song was doing a little more than just expressing our anger: It was telling what we would do if you wasn't a cop, if we could have a fair fight. All these things just scared the shit out of people.”

So much so that the group was banned from performing “Fuck tha Police” on their first major tour in the summer of 1989 — and the only one with all of the original group members intact. In the film, this plays out with a dramatic scene where the group members sit outside Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena and get a talking-to from local police. Under no circumstances are they to perform “Fuck tha Police.” In real life, that happened at just about every show on the tour. It was the one song that was off-limits.

“Every city we would go to, the police would come backstage, and they would read us all these obscenity laws … they would read us any ordinances they had regarding profanity onstage,” Cube said. “They probably used to tell Elvis Presley [the same] when he performed. … The promoters said flat out, ‘The tour is not going to happen if you guys perform that song.’”

By the time the tour reached Detroit, three N.W.A members had had enough: How can you be an act that dares to tell you the realities of their streets, police brutality chief among them, and not perform the song that best illustrates that life? Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Dr. Dre went rogue and hatched a plan to play the one song everyone wanted to hear — the song that had government officials shaking in their boots.

“We got fed up in Detroit; we was just tired of them coming backstage. We was tired of outside forces trying to dictate who we were and what we was going to do. And then we was just like, ‘Tonight's the night,'” Cube said. “When we started the song off, we heard what we thought was gunshots. Then we saw these undercover police rushing the stage. So we just took off running. They gaffled us up and tried to really lecture us on what we can do in Detroit and what we can't do. They just wanted to wreck the show.”

And they did. Yella said the group never got paid for that performance.

MC Ren and Eazy-E perform during the Straight Outta Compton tour at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1989.

Eazy-E, the charismatic leader of the group and the head of its label imprint, Ruthless Records, didn’t want to have any of it. He was furious the guys defied the order they all agreed to, according to Cube. They’d anticipated that, which is why they left him out of the potentially game-changing decision.

“We knew Eazy would veto us performing because he was so business-minded,” Cube said. “Me, Dre, and Ren, we were like, ‘Yeah, we should do “Fuck tha Police” tonight.’ You see it onstage. Everybody like, ‘You ready? You ready? Let's go! Let's do it. Let's do that shit! Do that shit!’ It was mayhem after that.”

In the cinematic version of events, a group of plainclothes cops slowly walk toward the stage, brandishing badges and reaching for what we’re to guess are guns. The sound of gunfire erupts. Frantic concertgoers scatter in various directions, and the rappers stop performing and run backstage, where they’re met with a line of Detroit police officers before being thrown in a police van.

“It's a pivotal moment because it's one of the many moments where they stood up and they had the courage to say, ‘Freedom of speech applies to everyone in America, and we are not going to take this abuse. We're just not going to do it,’” said Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray. “It was a pivotal moment in their brotherhood, it's a pivotal moment in American history, and it just showed how unfair things are.”

View this photo on Instagram

Twenty-seven years after the Straight Outta Compton album was released, not much has changed. N.W.A’s music — and “Fuck tha Police” in particular — felt like a foretelling, drawing a direct line to the way that black kids were being treated in major cities. Cube, who wrote the song when he was a teenager, is now 46 years old, yet he can’t say he’s surprised to look around and discover that the social discourse committed to tape back then is still relevant now.

It cements the importance of rappers who made an album that gave a voice to a population nobody seemed to care about: kids in the ’hood.

For better or worse, “Fuck tha Police” still works today. Lyrics written nearly three decades ago feel contemporary as activists assemble in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, and Cincinnati, taking on local police and demanding answers for the body count of young black men at the hands of police officers.

“Nothing has changed with their behavior with our community. That's why it's so poignant, like the song was written yesterday. It's really up to us as a society to hold these dudes more accountable and get them indicted and prosecuted and arrested and thrown in jail for breaking the law,” Cube said. “We got a movie about history that feels like it's present day. I don't want, 20 years from now, we look at this movie and say, ‘Damn, this was predicting the future.’”

Cube paused, letting those words sink in.

“Now is the time to put our energy into getting these dudes prosecuted,” he continued. “It's always been sad. It was sad in '89, you know? It's sad now, it's uncalled for in a lot of cases. For all the statistics they have on crime, you still got a majority of people in the ’hood that don't do crimes. So stop painting us all with the same brush and treat us like law-abiding citizens that most of us are.”

The rapper hopes that the film will emphasize the lack of progress that’s transpired all these years later. In Straight Outta Compton , he thinks it’s clear why he wrote “Fuck tha Police” and gave voice to the kids who needed it most.

“We wanted to highlight the excessive force and … the humiliation that we go through in these situations,” Cube said. “So the audience can know why we wrote ‘Fuck tha Police,’ and they can feel the same way.”

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How N.W.A’s ‘Fuck tha Police’ Became the ‘Perfect Protest Song’

• By Kory Grow

Over the last week, N.W.A ‘s fierce indictment of racial injustice, “Fuck tha Police,” has become the anthem of a revolution, as thousands all over the world have taken to the streets in outrage over the wrongful killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Protesters have scrawled the song title on the homemade signs they wave and spray-painted it to walls. They’ve also been playing the 32-year-old track, which appeared on the group’s landmark Straight Outta Compton LP, so much that it experienced a nearly 300 percent uptick in on-demand streams across all platforms , and Pandora reports a nearly 550 percent increase in people building personal stations around the song.

Those statistics don’t sit particularly well with one of the song’s cowriters. “This shit is unfortunate,” MC Ren says on a call shortly after a memorial for Floyd was televised. “A lot of people would be happy that they song gets streamed, but it’s unfortunate, because look how it came about: George Floyd — that was some bullshit. Enough is enough.”

Although N.W.A first raised eyebrows when MTV banned the video for “Straight Outta Compton,” it was “Fuck tha Police” that gave the group its legacy. In about six minutes, MCs Ice Cube, Ren, and Eazy-E serve as prosecutors against the overzealous LAPD, accusing cops of pulling them over in their cars and raiding their homes, over a hard-hitting beat while the track’s producer, Dr. Dre, presides as judge. “Fuck the police comin’ straight from the underground,” Ice Cube raps. “A young nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown and not the other color, so police think they have the authority to kill a minority.” In Ren’s verse, he raps, “Taking out a police would make my day, but a nigga like Ren don’t give a fuck to say… fuck the police.” Both Ren and Cube were only 19 years old when they recorded the track, which has taken on new life in recent years.

Streams of “Fuck tha Police” surged in late 2014 and early 2015 — according to Alpha Data, the analytics provider that powers the  Rolling Stone charts — as people protested and mourned the deaths of many unarmed black men who died from the actions of policemen, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York and Freddie Gray, in Baltimore. When Black Lives Matter held a vigil to honor Brown on the one-year anniversary of his death, streams of the song had increased nearly 44 times from the week of his death. The track experienced another surge in January 2016, when Black Lives Matter led a march in San Francisco ahead of Super Bowl 50. Streams of the song have continued to ebb and flow in the months since then as stories of police brutality became national news.

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When considering the longevity of “Fuck tha Police,” Ren says it means as much to him now as it did three decades ago. “It’s still the same message,” he says. “It’s the same thing and it’s gonna have the same message after I’m gone.”

Over the years, Ice Cube has echoed Ren’s viewpoint. “That song is still in the same place before it was made,” the rapper said in 2015. “It’s our legacy here in America with the police department and any kind of authority figures that have to deal with us on a day-to-day basis. There’s usually abuse and violence connected to that interaction, so when ‘Fuck tha Police’ was made in 1988, it was 400 years in the making. And it’s still just as relevant as it was before it was made.”

“It seemed like all throughout junior high school, high school, [police] would just fuck with you for no reason,” Ren says. “It was like, if you black, you young, you in the hood, you in the ghettos of America, you just get fucked with. What you hear on the record is all the frustration, all the times getting harassed, getting pulled over for no reason at all, getting disrespected, having them try to disrespect your parents all because of your skin color. All of that builds up and you make a record. But we never thought the record would be around today with people still playing the record and into it. But shit, to me, it’s a perfect protest song.”

Ice Cube has said he had the idea for the song early in his time with N.W.A, but that Dr. Dre was reluctant to record it since he had been in and out of county jail and didn’t want to be hassled more because of a song. Dre came around to the idea of it after he and Eazy-E were busted for shooting paintballs at people waiting for a bus. “The cops caught us and we were face down on the freeway, with guns pointed at us,” Dre recalled in 2007. “We thought it was bullshit. So we went to the studio and created the song.”

“At the time, Daryl Gates, who was the chief of police over at the LAPD, had declared a war on gangs,” Ice Cube recalled in 2015. “A war on gangs, to me, is a politically correct word to say a war on anybody you think is a gang member… It meant a war on every black kid with a baseball hat on, with a T-shirt on, some jeans and some tennis shoes. So it was just too much to bear, to be under that kind of occupying force, who was abusive. It’s just, enough is enough. Our music was our only weapon.”

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N.w.a reflect on 'efil4zaggin,' 1991's most dangerous album.

The group discussed Dre and Eazy’s incident at the apartment Dre and DJ Yella shared in Paramount, California, and headed out to the studio to record it quickly. Rapper the D.O.C., who co-wrote much of Straight Outta Compton , remembers when Cube brought the song concept back up again. “When he pulled it out, the title of the song just moved everybody in that space that day,” he says. “And we dedicated that day to build that feeling out.”

“We would go to the studio, Dre would put the beat on, and Cube would go in the corner and I would go in the corner and we would just write our shit,” Ren remembers. “When we was doing ‘Fuck tha Police,’ we didn’t know it would be as big as it was. We knew we wasn’t getting airplay.”

The song took on a new importance, though, when the assistant director of the FBI mailed a letter to Priority Records complaining about the song. “Law enforcement officers dedicate their lives to the protection of our citizens,” it read, “and recording such as the one from N.W.A are both discouraging and degrading to these brave, dedicated officers.” Straight Outta Compton was already a platinum-certified hit that had made it into the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 at the time, but Priority publicized the letter, and the track became an underground hit. “Shit, when we got the letter from the FBI, that’s when we knew right there that shit was big,” Ren says. “From then on out, it’s just been on.”

“Eazy loved the letter,” the D.O.C. recalls. “The idea was to make a point known, and everybody got the point all the way up to the highest cop.”

Despite the controversy, N.W.A usually kept the song out of their set lists when they performed live. The movie Straight Outta Compton depicts one of the rare times the group played it, in Detroit in 1989, when authorities there specifically told them not to. “The police chased us down and threw us in a little room and we sat there for an hour,” the D.O.C. recalls. “And then they come ask everybody for autographs. I think everybody but Cube obliged. He was the only guy that said, ‘Fuck y’all.’ He was always 1,000 percent true to his shit.” Similarly, Ren adds that whenever he has met cops, they’ve told him they like the song.

After news of the FBI letter got out, the song’s legacy ballooned. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Rage Against the Machine both covered it, and 2Pac, the Prodigy, comedian Chris Rock and countless others have sampled it. The screenwriters of the mockumentary Fear of a Black Hat parodied it in the movie, and YG recently took the song title and built his own George Floyd protest anthem out of it.

“It’s crazy how we were getting criticized for this years ago,” Dr. Dre said in 2015 of “Fuck tha Police.” “And now, it’s just like, ‘OK, we understand.’ This movie [ Straight Outta Compton ] will keep shining a light on the problem, especially because of all the situations that are happening in Ferguson and here in Los Angeles. It’s definitely going to keep this situation in people’s minds and make sure that everyone out there knows that this is a problem that keeps happening still today.”

After Ice Cube left the group in 1989, N.W.A recorded a “Fuck tha Police” sequel, “Sa Prize (Part 2),” on their 100 Miles and Runnin’ EP the following year. Ren is the first to say the original “Fuck tha Police” is the classic, but one of his lyrics from “Sa Prize” still resonates with him: “You call that right but when you’re black there’s no right.”

“There ain’t no right,” he says. “Today, you could have all the money in the world, [but] to the police, if they pull you over, you just a nigga. So you don’t have no rights. Like KRS-One once said, ‘There can never be justice on stolen land.’ This problem is not gonna go away until people realize how big a problem it is and how the problem got created. A lot of people don’t want to talk about it. But hopefully with all this protests worldwide, it will make people want to talk more. Because if they don’t, it’s gonna be a bigger problem. I know they don’t want no armed revolution.”

“Racism is just the symptom, but the fight is economic,” the D.O.C. says. “Black people have been marginalized and kept away from the economics of this country. I think people are starting to understand that and are trying to figure out how we can change that and allow everybody to join in this game of capitalism. That more than anything else is going to solidify people of color to really care about peace in their own neighborhoods, policing their own streets, not unlike the Black Panther party were doing back in the Sixties. [The Black Panthers] weren’t going to allow rogue police to come into their neighborhood and do the stuff these guys are doing to George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery or Breonna Taylor. You couldn’t have done that in the Panthers’ neighborhood. They weren’t going to allow it.”

Ren hasn’t gone out to any of the George Floyd protests, because he feels with the pandemic that “it’s too much shit,” but he supports the people in the streets. “I’m protesting in spirit,” he says. “I’m protesting with my song, ‘Fuck tha Police.'” He supports protesters’ calls to defund police as well as the need for better training, but mostly he wants to see justice for Floyd. “These motherfuckers got to pay,” he says, referring to the four officers involved in Floyd’s killing. “I saw something the other day, saying, it’s going to be hard to prosecute ’em. Man, if them motherfuckers get off, come on. You think it’s bad now, this is just the appetizer.”

Like Ren, the D.O.C. hasn’t attended any protests, but he’s currently working on a plan to effect change for people of color locally in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, where he lives. And he’s hopeful people all over the world who are protesting seize the opportunity to effect change and find focus. “You have to understand what it is you want, create a plan for what you want, and don’t allow them to give you any less than what it is you want, and that’s it,” he says. “Once you get a seat at the table, just like other communities, you will no longer allow [killings like] George Floyd’s [to happen].”

Ren, though, is less optimistic. “It’s unfortunate somebody had to lose they life for [streams of ‘Fuck tha Police’ to go up], but it’s going to continue to happen,” he says. “That shit will happen long after I’m gone and Cube gone: People will still be saying, ‘Fuck the police.’ You’ll see it on posters. You’ll see it on the walls. People will listen to it again, because police brutality is never gonna end in this country for black people. Hopefully something will change, but black people have been getting killed for so long. Since we came to America, we’ve been getting lynched and shit for no reason at all. It’s like, when do this shit end?”

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'Straight Outta Compton' tells epic story of NWA

In the late 1980s, Los Angeles hip-hop group N.W.A created a sensation and controversy with their music, which was labeled gangsta rap. Like the group's story, the making of their much-anticipated biopic, Straight Outta Compton, is filled with drama. From the jump, the movie is a raw look at the rise of N.W.A — five tough, talented boyz-n-the-hood who became provocative hip-hop icons. It's the story of producers Dr. Dre and DJ Yella, rappers MC Ren, Ice Cube and Eazy-E, whose character in the film explains to their manager what N.W.A stands for: "Niggaz Wit Attitudes."

The movie depicts how their attitudes were shaped in the badlands of Compton, a city in south-central Los Angeles County with a reputation for drugs, crime and street gangs and a shocking murder rate. After years of getting racially profiled and harassed by the police, N.W.A obscenely defied the cops on vinyl and onstage.

Music Intended To Provoke

One scene re-enacts a 1989 concert in Detroit as the band performs their song "F*** tha Police." The scene shows the cops descending onto the stage, inciting the audience to protest. The song had earlier prompted the FBI to write an angry letter to N.W.A's label, Ruthless Records, which in turn used it to generate publicity.

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"This kind of counter-cop resistance music existed before N.W.A, but N.W.A gave it its name," says Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop . The former writer for The Source magazine says N.W.A's diatribes against police brutality put West Coast rap on the map. And Charnas says their songs are still relevant today.

Ice Cube, born O'Shea Jackson, was just 16 when he joined N.W.A to write what he called reality raps. "We always saw ourselves as street reporters," he told NPR, noting that "F** tha Police" continues to be used during protests against the police, from Los Angeles to Ferguson, Mo.

"This song was bigger than N.W.A at that point — it was an anthem," Ice Cube says. "We just wasn't five guys crying wolf or complaining about our little incidents with the officers, but that it was an epidemic and it was everywhere."

The movie includes vulnerable moments of brotherhood and friendship, and a moment during the 1992 LA riots depicting the truce between the Bloods and the Crips gangs. The film also includes the group's musical beefs, their business dealings with manager Jerry Heller and menacing incidents involving former bodyguard Suge Knight, who co-founded Death Row Records with Dr. Dre.

Long Road To Making The Film Ice Cube, who is also one of the movie's producers, says getting Straight Outta Compton made was rough. "It was hard to get the financing that we needed, to license all the music we needed, to also get a studio behind the movie that wouldn't treat it like a typical hip-hop biopic," he says. "Then you had calls and threats from Jerry Heller to Suge Knight, so it just was a mountain."

Now a Hollywood actor and screenwriter, Cube says he also had to convince Dr. Dre to drop his skepticism. "He was like, 'Don't touch our history, don't mess with our legacy, don't mess it up,'" Ice Cube recalls. "And I'm like, 'We're not messing it up, we're gonna enhance it.' I just told him that we're not gonna be wack."

Dr. Dre eventually joined Ice Cube to produce the movie. But the whole venture took more than 11 years, says executive producer Bill Straus, who began his career as a production assistant on Ice Cube's movie Boyz n the Hood . Straus says the key was getting Eazy-E's widow, Tomica Woods-Wright, to release the rights to N.W.A's music.

"She had a reputation of being guarded," says Straus. "I think a lot of people had come at her, right after Eazy died — she'd inherited a lot of money. And I think that experience, like, sort of frayed her a little bit."

Straus says one of the writers invited her to meet. "The first hour, she seemed sort of guarded, but after a while it just became this love-in. And she told us so many stories about Eric. She took her shoes off; by the end of the meeting she was crying."

Controversy Before Filming Woods-Wright also signed on as co-producer on the film. The movie, like N.W.A's music before it, has already been criticized for its misogyny. Casting calls offended many when they asked for "the hottest of the hottest" girls with "great bodies;" "light-skinned" girls with "small waists [and] nice hips," as well as "medium to dark skin tone" African-American girls who are "poor" and "not in good shape." The filmmakers don't apologize for the anti-female lyrics and dismiss their early antics as boys will be boys. But all these decades later, Dr. Dre's new album, Compton , inspired in part by the movie, includes the song "Loose Cannons" in which the rapper kills a woman and buries her body.

That song is not in the movie, but Straus says the first drafts of the script did include a scene in which Dr. Dre brutally attacks TV host Dee Barnes during a record release party. That alleged incident in 1991, for which Barnes filed a $22 million lawsuit, didn't make it into the final cut.

Dan Charnas says that's no surprise. "I think this movie is kind of a hagiography, because N.W.A did do some significant things in our culture. But I don't expect Dr. Dre to be honest or introspective about the Dee Barnes thing. Because he's never been honest or introspective about the Dee Barnes thing."

Dr. Dre declined to be interviewed by NPR.

There are other incidents alleged to have happened in real life that didn't make it into the film. Director F. Gary Gray told NPR, "The original version of this movie was three hours and 30 minutes long, and the original script was almost close to 150 pages. And you just have to make a lot of decisions when you're in a process like this, 'cause you can't release the Gone with the Wind . They call it the Lord of the Rings version. It was so long. And we just had to really pick and choose, and I think we picked the right things to tell the story." Keeping It Real

Gray says he wanted the movie to be authentic. He put his actors, including Ice Cube's son, O'Shea Jackson Jr., through a hip-hop boot camp, teaching them to walk, talk and rap like they did in LA in the 1980s and '90s.

"Instead of hunching down and getting low like these guys perform nowadays," said Gray, "standing up straight with chin out with bravado was part of it, with their chest out."

Gray says he insisted on filming on location in Compton and South Central LA, though he shot scenes of the LA riots in the San Fernando Valley. He says audiences might be surprised the movie is more than just a long rap video.

"Some people say, 'Hey, it's something kind of Shakespearean about this movie,' " Gray said. "You have brotherhood and betrayal, you have tragedy and triumph, the rags-to-riches element. Think about it: Dr. Dre starts in a garage spinning on two turntables. Then he becomes a billionaire? That's crazy."

Of course, not everyone from N.W.A's heyday is a billionaire or a movie star. Suge Knight is in jail awaiting a murder trial after allegedly running down two people during the shoot for a commercial for the movie. Still, N.W.A's music resonates across the country as protests against police brutality take place.

When the pioneering album Straight Outta Compton came out in 1988, it went double platinum. Now, Universal Pictures hopes N.W.A's story is a hit on the big screen. Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Retired Detroit sergeant recalls telling N.W.A. they couldn't play 'F*** tha Police' at 1989 concert

• Published: Aug. 27, 2015, 7:57 p.m.
• John Counts | [email protected]

Retired Detroit police Sgt. Larry Courts told a tale straight outta the old school days of hip-hop at a forum in Ypsilanti Wednesday night.

Courts was one of the Detroit police officers in charge of informing the members of the infamous gangsta rap group N.W.A - including Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Easy E - that they couldn't play a their police-bashing tune off their hit record "Straight Outta Compton" while performing at Joe Louis arena in 1989.

Officials decided the group's song, "F*** the Police," might incite violence at the concert. The group tried playing the song anyway, prompting officers to jump on stage and stop the performance.

Courts questioned the decision and said he was just following orders. In fact, he said he pleaded with his higher-ups to just let them play the song.

But the decision had already been made.

The incident was chronicled in the recent N.W.A. biopic movie of the same name as the album, though a recent report in the Detroit Free Press says some of the details in the movie might have been a little rearranged for the sake of drama.

While responding to a question about interactions between police officers and teenagers at a "Black Lives Do Matter" forum held at the Parkridge Community Center in Ypsilanti, Courts told his account of the N.W.A. concert to illustrate that police are always there to "keep the peace."

"I remember years ago when N.W.A. came to Detroit," he said. "I was working the gang squad at the time. Those types of venues, we were always there. We had contact with (N.W.A.) in advance that there was one song that they had out at the time. I'm sure some of you remembe r- well maybe not the young kids, but the old kids - Eff the Police. It wasn't going to happen in the city of Detroit. And we told them that before they came. That particular night, all our personnel were working that venue. There were close to 200 of us. We were strategically placed throughout ... Joe Louis Arena."

Courts said current Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon was in charge of the gang squad at the time.

"I said, 'This is America. They should be allowed to sing their song. The fear is that it would incite (trouble)," he said. "Me and some of the other supervisors and ... some of the guys who worked the streets ... we didn't think there was going to be a riot. But we had our marching orders. We were told that under no circumstance that they were to perform that song."

Courts said he personally talked to members of N.W.A., with a delegation of cops behind him, and told them they couldn't play "F*** tha Police."

"At the end of their night, at the end of their performance, they started their song. We immediately jumped on the stage and started taking out amplifiers," he said.

Pulling the plug on a song in front of "20,000 screaming kids who did not see any harm in that particular song being played" may not have been the right decision to help keep the peace, which is the main role of police in any situation, Courts intimated.

"That's when the problem started," he said.

The Detroit Free Press reported that nine adults and nine juveniles were arrested on misdemeanor charges outside Joe Louis.

In the movie, members of N.W.A. are chased out of the concert by police and taken into custody, but that might not be totally accurate, according to the recent Free Press report, which cites a fact-check of the movie conducted by the Daily Beast.

"The members of N.W.A. were hustled away from the arena by their security and whisked off to the safety of their hotel rooms -- only to be arrested later when they sneaked down to the lobby to meet girls..." the group's former manager Jerry Heller recalled in a memoir.

John Counts covers crime and breaking news for The Ann Arbor News. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on Twitter . Find all Washtenaw County crime stories here .

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Watching N.W.A. perform live is an absolutely killer experience. Obviously, you need to understand what you are getting into. If you are offended by their lyrics or profanity, this is probably not the concert for you.

Obviously they are one of the greatest rap groups of all time, and a live performance is the top of the heap. The stage was dark and multi-tiered. They had a top tier where there were dancing girls in pink outfits dancing. On the main part of the lower stage they would run back and forth and jump up on platforms on the left and right at certain parts of songs.Dr. Dre and MC Ren came out first and did a couple of songs, but in my opinion that was just warming up the audience. Obviously, Dre is the king, but the performance wasn't amazing.

The main highlight of the show was Straight Outta Compton and Fuck the Police. When Ice Cube and Eazy-E collaborate on the second song, it blows my mind. I feel the anger and the hatred. Most people consider this gangster rap, and really they invented the genre, but I can't help but feel it's more about the world they live and the world they are from. It's more powerful when you break it into human terms instead of just labels. When they perform the last two songs, the crowd is about as hyped as they can be and everyone is jumping and screaming. I loved every second of it.

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2024 NBA Mock Draft: Updated Projections As Postseason Begins

Predicting the 2024 NBA Draft results as the postseason begins around the league.

• Author: Draft Digest Staff

In this story:

For many NBA teams, the season is officially over as the postseason is underway. As such, more focus will be shifted towards the upcoming draft, where each of these teams who weren't in the playoff picture will look to improve. In just over two months, the 2024 NBA Draft will take place, which is the perfect opportunity to add talent.

Between now and June's event, prospects meet with teams around the league and have the opportunity to showcase their talent in workouts. Furthermore, the best prospects will get to compete in the combine as another way to increase draft stock. Even in a class that lacks a clear top pick, there's real depth, meaning that even second-round picks should be of value this summer.

Leveraging Tankathon to generate our draft order, we take a look at fit and projections for this upcoming event in this iteration of Draft Digest's 2024 NBA Mock Draft.

Team Detlef forward Matas Buzelis (13) of the G League Ignite celebrates with a teammate after

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1. Detroit Pistons: Alex Sarr (NBL) 2. Washington Wizards: Ron Holland (Ignite) 3. Portland Trail Blazers: Matas Buzelis (Ignite)

Early Lottery

Mar 15, 2024; Nashville, TN, USA; Kentucky Wildcats guard Reed Sheppard (15) drives down the lane

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4. Charlotte Hornets: Zaccharie Risacher (INTL) 5. San Antonio Spurs: Rob Dillingham (Kentucky) 6. Toronto Raptors: Nikola Topic (INTL) 7. Memphis Grizzlies: Reed Sheppard (Kentucky) 8. Utah Jazz: Stephon Castle (UConn)

Late Lottery

Mar 24, 2024; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Colorado Buffaloes forward Cody Williams (10) looks on during

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9. Houston Rockets (via BKN): Donovan Clingan (UConn) 10. Atlanta Hawks: Cody Williams (Colorado) 11. Chicago Bulls: Dalton Knecht (Tennessee) 12. OKC Thunder (via HOU): Yves Missi (Baylor) 13. Sacramento Kings: Ja'Kobe Walter (Baylor) 14. Portland Trail Blazers (via GSW): Isaiah Collier (USC)

Mid-First Round

Feb 26, 2024; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; Miami (Fl) Hurricanes guard Kyshawn George (7)

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15. Miami Heat: Jared McCain (Duke) 16. Orlando Magic: Tidjane Salaun (INTL) 17. Toronto Raprors (via IND): Tyler Smith (Ignite) 18. New Orleans Pelicans (via: LAL): Kyle Filipowski (Duke) 19. Philadelphia 76ers: Kyshawn George (Miami) 19. Cleveland Cavaliers: Devin Carter (Providence) 20. New Orleans Pelicans (via MIL): Johnny Furphy (Kansas)

Late First Round

A dejected Purdue Boilermakers center Zach Edey (15) walks off the court after losing the Men's NCAA

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22. Milwaukee Bucks (via NOP): Tristan da Silva (Colorado) 23. Phoenix Suns: Zach Edey (Purdue) 24. New York Knicks: DaRon Holmes (Dayton) 25. New York Knicks (via DAL): Ryan Dunn (Virginia) 26. Washington Wizards (via LAC): Kel'el Ware (Indiana) 27. Minnesota Timberwolves: Kevin McCullar (Kansas) 28. Denver Nuggets: Dillon Jones (Weber State) 29. Utah Jazz (via OKC): Melvin Ajinca (INTL) 30. Boston Celtics: Izan Almansa (Ignite)

Early Second Round

Mar 2, 2024; Lexington, Kentucky, USA; Kentucky Wildcats guard Justin Edwards (1) celebrates during

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31. Toronto Raptors (via DET): Jaylon Tyson (Cal) 32. Utah Jazz (via WAS): Ulrich Chomche (INTL) 33. Portland Trail Blazers (via CHA): Bobi Klintman (NBL) 34. Milwaukee Bucks (via POR): Justin Edwards (Kentucky) 35. San Antonio Spurs: Terrence Shannon Jr. (Illinois) 36. Indiana Pacers (via TOR): Milan Momcilovic (Iowa State) 37. Minnesota Timberwolves (via MEM): KJ Simpson (Colorado) 38. New York Knicks (via UTA): Baylor Scheierman (Creighton) 39. Memphis Grizzlies (via BKN): Carlton Carrington (Pittsburgh) 40. Portland Trail Blazers (via ATL): Jamal Shead (Houston) 41. Philadelphia 76ers (via CHI): Payton Sandfort (Iowa) 42. Charlotte Hornets (via HOU): Oso Ighodaro (Marquette) 43. Miami Heat: Hunter Sallis (Wake Forest) 44. Houston Rockets (via GSW): Harrison Ingram (North Carolina) 45. Sacramento Kings: Ajay Mitchell (UCSB)

Late Second Round

Mar 29, 2024; Detroit, MN, USA; Creighton Bluejays guard Trey Alexander (23) plasy the ball in the

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46. FORFEITED (PHI) 47. San Antonio Spurs (via LAL): Adem Bona (UCLA) 48. LA Clippers (via IND): Wooga Poplar (Miami) 49. Orlando Magic: Tyler Kolek (Marquette) 50. Indiana Pacers (via CLE): Kylan Boswell (Arizona) 51. Washington Wizards (via PHX): Trevon Brazile (Arkansas) 52. Indiana Pacers (via NOP): PJ Hall (Clemson) 53. Golden State Warriors (via MIL): Trey Alexander (Creighton) 54. Detroit Pistons (via NYK): Jalen Bridges (Baylor) 55. Boston Celtics (via DAL): Johni Broome (Auburn) 56. Los Angeles Lakers (via LAC): Alex Karaban (UConn) 57. Denver Nuggets (via MIN): Tyon Grant-Foster (Grand Canyon) 58. Memphis Grizzlies (via OKC): Pacome Dadiet (INTL) 59. FORFEITED (PHX) 60. Dallas Mavericks (via BOS): Pelle Larsson (Arizona)

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• June 18, 1989 Setlist

N.W.A Setlist at Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati, OH, USA

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• Jun 16 1989 MECCA Arena Milwaukee, WI, USA Add time Add time
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Tour Update

Marquee memories: the dandy warhols.

• The Dandy Warhols
• Apr 16, 2024
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