"A riot is at bottom the language of
the unheard"-Martin Luther king Jr.
There is no precise measurement for tragedy.
Horrible things happen-lives lost, property destroyed, dreams denied and left
shattered into a million little pieces. The mind tries to measure the impact
that these things have on a human being but unfortunately there is no logical
or comprehensive way to understand why these tragedies occur.
There were two big events that took
place in Los Angeles that not only changed the history of the big city of
angels but also changed rap music forever. The Watts riots and the Los Angeles
riots of 1992. The Watts Riots began on the evening of August 11, 1965. A black
resident flagged down a white police officer and told him that a man was
driving recklessly on the road. The white officer pulled over the vehicle. The
driver was Marquette Frye. He was driving with his brother, Ronald. According
to the police, Marquette failed a sobriety test and the white officer told him
he would be arrested for drunk driving and that his car would be towed. From
that point on many residents coming out of their houses and gathered to see
what was going on. The outrage that the citizens felt towards the brothers and
their mother being arrested ended up being expressed by physical violence
toward the officer and his backup team, which lead to the start of the riots.
They started to destroy buildings and looting stores at night, and eventually
the riots spread to Watts.
On the third day of the riots, 103rd
St. in Watts was burned to the ground. This day also marked the spread of the
riots to other parts of South Central, especially up Central Ave. Looting
continued and snipers began to take out police and the National Guard. The
police responded with brutal force, killing many. The rioting spread all over
California, from three days of rioting in San Diego, and continuing to
Pasadena, Pacoima, Monrovia, Long Beach, and Wilmington. 34 people died. 118
people suffered gunshot wounds. Most people were killed by the LAPD and the
National Guard. There was over $40 million in damages. After the riots, thousands
of white residents in the areas around Watts, such as Compton, South Central,
and Inglewood, left Los Angeles in fear. Many Black residents left Watts to
these other areas.
Studies showed that people rioted
because of unemployment, bad schools and education, and prior instances of
police brutality. However I feel that the deep reason for rioting was racism
and the lack of power people had over their life.
The Los Angeles Riots began in the
1990’s. This era in Los Angles proved to be a difficult time socially and
politically, especially for South Central, LA. The riots began with the beating
of Rodney King, but quickly escalated to Liquor stores, chain stores, fast-food
places, and white communities ended up being the main targets of looting, mass
burning and fires, and violence. In the end, 53 people were killed, most all
were rioters or innocent victims. There was over $1 billion in damages left.
The riots could be seen as acts of the built up anger and frustration of the
residents that spread to San Francisco, Oakland, Las Vegas, Seattle, and
Chicago.
Rodney King, 1992
After the riots Rap music changed its
“tune”. Loud, observant, and demanding of attention, gangsta rap, in
particular, became the soundtrack to this era of racial instability, and is
believed by many to not only have led the nation in cultural exploration, but was
the exact prediction of insurrection.
A prominent voice in the movement, Ice
Cube became a rapper and actor who pioneered this subgenre of west coast
hip-hop with his anti-authoritative gang of poetic nihilists, N.W.A. At the
time of the riots, he was on to his own initiative, releasing solo records and
focusing on a burgeoning career in the movie business. or the entertainer, the
riots were the inevitable result of America’s callous disregard for the black
community, a by-any-means-necessary approach to prevent the silent removal of
an African-American thread in the country’s cultural weave. On his 1991 album, Death
Certificate, his second release as a solo artist, the rapper discussed many
tensions that would later lead to this outburst, specifically in his song,
“Black Korea.”
He explained, “You could feel the
tension, could feel the heat in the community. Feel people getting fed up. You
know? The police really had carte blanche in our neighborhoods till we did the
song “F**k tha Police,” then people really started to actually look at what
they were doing. And then the Rodney King incident came out to really show
[it]. So, we had been talking about this all along, that it was happening. We
had talked about it on my record “Death Certificate,” which was in ‘91. We
talked about the tension between Blacks and Koreans; Latasha Harlins…She got
shot in the back of the head over some orange juice by a Korean storeowner.
These kinds of things were starting to fuel animosity and blame and just
nastiness.” (http://thegrio.com/2012/04/29/ice-cube-reflects-on-how-the-la-riots-changed-rap/)
From Ice Cube's Album Death Certificate, the song is called Steady Mobbin'
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