Rapper Snoop Dogg was arrested on marijuana charges at the Mexican border on the weekend. Is the unspoken détente between pop and the police over?
The news that Snoop Dogg was arrested for marijuana possession came as a shock to the music community yesterday. Who'd have guessed that the composer of 'Smoke Weed Every Day', 'The Weed Iz Mine' and 'Smokin Smokin Weed' was a habitual drug user? When he prevailed upon listeners to “smoke til your eyes get cataracts”, I always thought it was an ironic comment on healthy living.
The relationship between law enforcement and pop music is interestingly fraught. Since the rebellious hey day of rock ‘n roll, there has been a strong outlaw, boundary breaking and libertarian strand to pop culture, which is emphasised by the way most song lyrics are delivered in the first person, and is imprinted (rightly or wrongly) with a strong sense of autobiographical experience.
In the late sixties, police forces briefly went into overdrive arresting household name pop stars who openly espoused drug use, staging raids on the homes of members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, leading to William Rees Mogg’s “who breaks a butterfly on a wheel” Times editorial. Despite many subsequent drug busts and the hounding in the US of serial provocateurs like Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe and Eminem (usually for obscenity), you would have to say there has been a kind of stand-off between pop and the police ever since, with a blind eye turned to the openly challenging content of both songs and interviews. There have been occasional outbreaks of hostilities when vigorously anti-establishment musical genres like punk first take hold of public consciousness, leading to spates of arrests of scene leaders like The Sex Pistols or Clash. But if the forces of law and order were seriously intent on cracking down on unapologetic drug culture, how could reggae have flourished, techno have boomed or a group like the Grateful Dead become one of the biggest touring operations in America?
Hip hop, perhaps because of its roots in poverty and gangsta culture, has shifted the balance. The list of rappers jailed for quite serious crimes would make for an impressive prison concert (including the late Tupac Shakur, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim, Lil Wayne, Kid Cudi, TI, Ja Rule, DMX and ODB). But then, if you added every pop star who has sung about drugs or boasted about illegal adventures in interviews, you would have the most star studded festival bill in history. If they allow instruments into prisons, that is.
The targeting of rappers and hip hop shows has led to accusations (specifically denied by the New York Police Department) that many US police forces have specialised hip hop crime units, which would suggest that any unspoken détente between pop and the police is over. In the UK this week, there were complaints (by music agents and MPs) about heavy-handed policing of the urban music scene in London, with accusations of discrimination based on ethnicity. Some performers have complained of being searched before they go on stage.
