From 'Fuck Tha Police' (1988) to 'Alright' (2015) - Hip hop music and the representation of the relationship between black people and the police then and now

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Freiburg (Anglistik), language: English, abstract: In this paper, I will analyze how the relationship between black people and the police is represented in hip hop music, more precisely rap music. For that reason, I chose two important songs in hip hop history which discuss this exact issue and therefore function as a representation of their particular time. In the theoretical part, I will give a short overview of the development of hip hop for a better understanding of the genre. After that, I will elucidate how representation in hip hop functions and which theory it refers to. In the practical part, I will analyze the two songs, Fuck Tha Police by N.W.A from 1988 and Alright by Kendrick Lamar from 2015, since both are important representatives of hip hop of their individual point in time. After the analysis, I will work out the differences and similarities in the representation of the relationship between black people and the police and finally draw my conclusion.