Sound of Da Police Lyrics

Be a officer? You wicked overseer!

KRS-One takes us into his view of history here.

By 1993, KRS-One was also going by the name The Teacher. Some fans loved the new persona, but he was also known for giving reporters didactic lectures and for a certain political arrogance. 

Here, he compares being a police officer to being a slave overseer, a comparison that may seem extreme. KRS has a historical point to make here, though: for Blacks in the U.S., the history of policing is inextricably tied to the history of slavery.

Black Africans who came to the early U.S. typically entered this country without any legal rights; slave laws legalized abuses as intense as murder for slave masters, while restricting virtually all human rights of slaves. Even after the official end of slavery in the U.S., Jim Crow segregation laws continued the close regulation of freedoms for African Americans.