N.W.A was undoubtedly one of the most well-known hip-hop groups during the 1980s. Comprised of Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr Dre, MC Ren and D.J. Yella, many cite N.W.A. as the kings of gangsta rap, as they were the group that brought it to a broader audience and crossed it into the mainstream.
N.W.A. released many hit songs, such as ‘Dopeman’ and ‘Boyz-N-The-Hood’ and as a result, ended up going nationwide with their music. They were unstoppable with vicious rappers like Ice Cube and mega-producers such as Dr Dre. However, one of their most controversial songs was ‘F*ck Tha Police’. However, at first, Dr Dre wasn’t on board with recording the song.
In a comprehensive book regarding rap written by Jonathan Abrams entitled, The Come Up an Oral History of the Rise of Hip Hop, Ice Cube recalled how Dr Dre initially opposed his idea for the track. Speaking to Abrams, the rapper (real name O’Shea Jackson) stated “I threw the lyrics away at first. Dre said that he didn’t wanna do the song. I had rapped it to him a year before we actually did it, and he was going through an issue where he had to go to jail every weekend, Friday night, get out Monday morning.
Jackson continued, “He didn’t wanna do the record cause he was like ‘Dude I don’t want these sheriffs fuckin me up when they find out that I produced this record when I go in for the weekend.’ He had just served like three months or something so he was like ‘Nah.'”
The former N.W.A rapper then disclosed that one of his Arizona friends convinced him to salvage the lyrics. Recounting how the situation unfolded, the Compton artist stated, “I’m thinking this song is never gonna get made. I was going to school in Phoenix, Arizona, and I was goin’ through my lyrics in my rap books, and I was bustin’ raps to my homeboy Phoenix Phil. I came across ‘F*ck Tha Police’, and I rapped it to him and he freaked out. When he freaked out, I just tore it out the book, because I didn’t wanna keep it if we weren’t going to do it. I just balled it up and threw it in the trash, and he was like ‘Aw hell no.’ He took it out of the trash, opened it back up and spread it across the table and made it flat, and he put it back in the folder part of my notebook.”
Speaking to Abrams about how Dre (real name Andre Young) eventually came around Cube said, “I told them [the crew] that I had this song and Dre didn’t wanna do it, and Eazy said, ‘Pull it out. I wanna hear this shit’. I pulled it out and did my verse and he was like: ‘We doing this. We are all gonna write a verse and we are gonna do this fucking song.’ By then Dre was off of that weekend program, and he was like ‘Fuck it, let’s do it. Let’s start working on it.'” You can listen to ‘F*ck The Police’ in the video below.
