Fuck the police: three ways

In Postwar (a breathtakingly thorough overview of European history since WWII), Tony Judt makes an interesting claim about the progression of popular culture in the 60s and 70s. According to Judt, immediately following the violent, radicalized, leftist youth movements of 1969 -- the French student movements, American civil rights, second-wave feminism, various Marxist and pseudo-Marxist organizations -- came the much more solipsistic, hedonistic wave of the Sexual Revolution. Judt is fairly skeptical of the purity of the former trend, but the latter is clearly even more of a problem in his eyes, representing as it does the full-on self-indulgence and navel-gazing of the adolescent Baby Boomer.

While I was reading Postwar over the summer, "Mrs. Officer," that Lil Wayne song, was on heavy rotation on the radio. Arguably the best lyric in that song is, of course: "And all she want me to do is fuck the police." (Ha ha because it's about wanting to have sex with a female police officer, get it?) So, with Judt in mind, I wonder if it's not so outlandish to say that radicalism is generally replaced by a decadent period of sex and solipsism. When NWA first sang "fuck the police," it was all about violent machismo mixed with political subtext, heavily in line with the aesthetic principle of a Weather Underground^* or Black Panthers-style organization, but already declawed enough to venture into the mainstream. Today, when Lil Wayne sings his version of "fuck the police," it's self-conscious, childishly naughty, and totally harmless -- on par with the saccharine sex of early disco or the stage antics of Sir Elton John.

When I first thought of this brilliant cultural analogy, I saw the Lil Wayne "fuck the police" moment in Judt's terms: a degenerate version of the slightly (only slightly) more "pure" NWA moment. But when I was reminded of it by Ryan over brunch today, his argument for the Lil Wayne version really stuck. Ryan was much more willing to give self-indulgence the benefit of the doubt, and I can see his point about it being more honest with respect to the whole enterprise of pop music in general. By the time NWA came out with that song, rap was already appearing on MTV, marketed toward a suburban, white audience, and thriving on the manufactured controversy. Lil Wayne's whole "Young Money" project, in contrast, is unapologetic in its anti-topicality. From start to finish, it's pure, childish fantasy -- youth culture at its most honest and, arguable, at its best.

Which brings me to "Fuck the Police" mark 3: the 2001 song by J Dilla. So, a new iteration of the cycle through a return to radical, politically-conscious machismo? The circle of life, it moves us all?

^*Ironically, but further bolstering my rap dichotomy, the "Weathermen" moniker is being used today by a contemporary rap group recycling the NWA-like sound and ideology.