The song's lyrics about "cop killing" was criticized by then-President of the United States George H. W. Bush,[6] as well as Vice President Dan Quayle.[6] Ice-T has referred to it as a "protest record".[7] Ice-T eventually recalled the album and re-released it without the inclusion of the song.[1]
Background
Ice-T, who wrote the song's lyrics, referred to "Cop Killer" as a "protest record",[7] stating that the song is "[sung] in the first person as a character who is fed up with police brutality".[8] Ice-T has also credited the Talking Heads song "Psycho Killer" with partially inspiring the song.[5] "Cop Killer" was written in 1990, and had been performed live several times, including at the 1991 Lollapalooza tour, before it had been recorded in a studio.[9]
Following its release, the song was met with opposition, with critics ranging from President George H. W. Bush to various law enforcement agencies, with demands for the song's withdrawal from commercial availability, citing concerns of promoting anti-police sentiment. Ice-T defended the lyrical content of the song as did various other proponents who did not believe that the song posed any risk and remained in support of the song continuing to be released and sold.
Criticism and controversy
The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) called for a boycott of all products by Time Warner in order to secure the removal of the song and album from stores.[10][11] Within a week, they were joined by police organizations across the United States.[6] Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Lloyd Bentsen, and Al D'Amato protested Warner Bros. Records's release of the song by cancelling their planned cameo appearances in the 1993 Warner Bros. Pictures political film Dave.[12]
Some critics argued that the song could cause crime and violence.[6][13] Dennis R. Martin (Former President, National Association of Chiefs of Police) argued that:
The misuse of the First Amendment is graphically illustrated in Time Warner's attempt to insert into the mainstream culture the vile and dangerous lyrics of the Ice-T song entitled "Cop Killer". The Body Count album containing "Cop Killer" was shipped throughout the United States in miniature body bags. Only days before distribution of the album was voluntarily suspended, Time Warner flooded the record market with a half million copies. The "Cop Killer" song has been implicated in at least two shooting incidents and has inflamed racial tensions in cities across the country. Those who work closely with the families and friends of slain officers volunteering for the American Police Hall of Fame and Museum are outraged by the message of "Cop Killer". It is an affront to the officers—144 in 1992 alone—who have been killed in the line of duty while the police was upholding the laws of our society and protecting all its citizens.[14]
Defense of the song
Others defended the album and cited the fact that Ice-T had sympathetically portrayed a police officer in the 1991 film, New Jack City.[15] Many people from the music world and other fields were supportive of the song. For example, in direct response to the criticism made by Dennis Martin above, Mark S. Hamm and Jeff Ferrell argued the following:
Ice-T is not the first artist to put a "cop killer" theme in United States popular culture. This theme has been the subject of countless cinematic and literary works, and has appeared many times before in popular music. During the Great Depression, for example, people celebrated Pretty Boy Floyd and his exploits, which included murdering law enforcement personnel. Similarly, the highly respected fiddler Tommy Jarrell wrote and sang "Policeman", which begins, "Policeman come and I didn't want to go this morning, so I shot him in the head with my 44." But perhaps the best-known case is Eric Clapton's cover version of Bob Marley and the Wailers' "I Shot the Sheriff", which reached the top of the U.S. music charts in the mid-1970s (a feat not approached by Ice-T). "I Shot the Sheriff", though, never suffered the sort of moral and political attacks that "Cop Killer" did. How do we account for this difference?[16]
Ice-T stated of the song, "I'm singing in the first person as a character who is fed up with police brutality. I ain't never killed no cop. I felt like it a lot of times. But I never did it. If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut".[17]
In a July 1992 editorial in The Wall Street Journal defending his company's involvement with the song, Time Warner co-CEO Gerald M. Levin repeated this defense, writing that rather than "finding ways to silence the messenger", critics and listeners should be "heeding the anguished cry contained in his message".[18]
The National Black Police Association opposed the boycott of Time Warner and the attacks on "Cop Killer", identifying police brutality as the cause of much anti-police sentiment, and proposed the creation of independent civilian review boards "to scrutinize the actions of our law enforcement officers" as a way of ending the provocations that caused artists such as Body Count "to respond to actions of police brutality and abuse through their music.... Many individuals of the law enforcement profession do not want anyone to scrutinize their actions, but want to scrutinize the actions of others."[11]
Further controversy and decision to withdraw song
Over the next month, controversy against the band grew. Vice President Quayle branded "Cop Killer" "obscene", and President Bush publicly denounced any record company that would release such a product.[6]Body Count was removed from the shelves of a retail store in Greensboro, North Carolina, after local police had told the management that they would no longer respond to any emergency calls at the store if they continued to sell the album.[11]
In July 1992, the New Zealand Police Commissioner unsuccessfully attempted to prevent an Ice-T concert in Auckland, arguing that "Anyone who comes to this country preaching in obscene terms the killing of police should not be welcome here",[15] before taking Body Count and Warner Bros. Records to the Indecent Publications Tribunal in an effort to get it banned under New Zealand's Indecent Publications Act 1963. This was the first time in twenty years that a sound recording had come before the censorship body and the first ever case involving popular music.[15] After reviewing the various submissions, and listening carefully to the album, the Tribunal found the song "Cop Killer" to be "not exhortatory", saw the album as displaying "an honest purpose", and found Body Count not indecent.[15]
At the July 1992 annual shareholders' meeting for Time Warner, actor Charlton Heston, who was a minor Time Warner shareholder, was given the opportunity to address the crowd, and, in a well publicized speech, recited lyrics from both "Cop Killer" and another song from Body Count, "KKK Bitch" – which namechecked PMRC head Tipper Gore – in an attempt to embarrass company executives into dropping the album.[19] In his autobiography, Charlton Heston wrote that he considered KKK Bitch "even more disgusting" and that he had tried to persuade the National Organization for Women to join a protest against its mentions of sex with 12-year-old girls but they didn't show interest.[20]
In a press conference in Beverley Hills to announce a change in policy, Ice-T made journalists watch almost 40 minutes of a documentary on the Civil Rights Movement before he spoke. He said that he was taking the decision to withdraw the song from future copies of the album. Time Warner followed up quickly in New York to say that they were recalling copies with "Cop Killer" included, which led to panic buying of the album.[21]
Some death threats were sent to Warner Bros. Records executives and some stockholders threatened to pull out of the company.[7] According to his 1994 book The Ice Opinion: Who Gives a Fuck?, Ice-T decided to remove the song from the album of his own volition.[7] Eventually, the album was re-issued with "Cop Killer" removed. Ice-T left the label in 1993, following additional disputes over his solo album Home Invasion.[7] The performer stated of the controversy that "When I started out, [Warner] never censored us. Everything we did, we had full control over. But what happened was when the cops moved on Body Count, they issued pressure on the corporate division of Warner Bros., and that made the music division, they couldn't out-fight 'em in the battle, so even when you're in a business with somebody who might not wanna censor you, economically people can put restraints on 'em and cause 'em to be afraid. I learned that lesson in there, that you're never really safe as long as you're connected to any big corporation's money."[22]
Commentary on the decision
The Source magazine, which was central to American hip-hop at the time, dubbed the decision as "the beginning of the end of rap music", viewing it as a gateway to widespread censorship of hip-hop. An editorial by Reginald Dennis cast doubt on Ice-T's statement that it was his decision to withdraw the song.[23]The Source became more critical of Ice-T in subsequent months, saying that he had avoided giving an interview on the subject in October[24] and then giving him the "Ross Perot Award", which implied that he had made the decision to withdraw the song for business reasons, in their end-of-year awards.[25] Ice-T responded by dissing The Source on his track "It's On". In his 2011 autobiography, he said that Source magazine had constantly criticised him for his decision to remove the track.[26]
Warner Bros. Records chairman Mo Ostin said in a 1994 interview with the Los Angeles Times, "[Time Warner] got so thin-skinned after the incident at the shareholders' meeting. In the end, Ice-T decided to leave because he could not allow tampering with his work. And I can't blame him, considering the climate." Expressing regret at the circumstances leading to Ice-T's departure, Ostin praised him as "a terrific artist who spoke the truth".[27]
Later years
The studio version of "Cop Killer" has not been re-released, although a live version of the song appears on the 2005 release Body Count: Live in LA. According to Ernie C, the controversy over the song "still lingers for us, even now. I'll try to book clubs and the guy I'm talking to will mention it and I'll think to myself, 'Man, that was 17 years ago', but I meet a lot of bands who ask me about it too and I'm real respected by other artists for it. But it's a love/hate thing. Ice gets it too, even though he plays a cop on TV now on Law & Order SVU."[9]
^"Dave". catalog.afi.com. Archived from the original on 2019-03-28. Retrieved 2021-12-02.
^Jones, Thomas David (1998). Human Rights: Group Defamation, Freedom of Expression, and the Law of Nations. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 126–129. ISBN90-411-0265-5.
