Streams For N.W.A's F*** Tha Police Increase By 272 Percent In Wake Of George Floyd's Death

Streams for N.W.A song 'F*** The Police' have nearly quadrupled in the wake of George Floyd's death, which has triggered a wave of protests across the globe to call out police brutality and systemic racism.

According to Rolling Stone, the 1988 track has seen a 272 percent increase in on-demand streams between 27 May and 1 June, compared to the five days before Floyd was killed.

The song comes from N.W.A's debut studio album Straight Outta Compton, which not only helped thrust West Coast rap into the limelight, but also helped give a voice to the agitated American black youth through the late 80s.

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Figures from Alpha Data, the data analytics provider that power the Rolling Stone charts, show how the seminal protest track has found a huge resurgence over the past couple of weeks, with 765,000 on-demand audio streams over the course of Sunday 31 May and Monday 1 June - nearly five times the number of streams the song was seeing on the Sunday and Monday before the protests broke out.

"The song previously saw a surge in listening in August 2015 amid protests in Ferguson a year after the shooting of Michael Brown, but even then, its daily streams on Sunday and Monday were double the size they were in 2015," Rolling Stone explained.

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In a 2016 interview with the music magazine, N.W.A's Ice Cube was asked how it felt to see so many unarmed black men continually being killed by police officers - some 20 years after 'F*** Tha Police' was released.

""[It] makes me feel like a black man," Ice Cube said.

"That's what it makes me feel like - same as always. As a black person, it's always seemed like it's a war on us. It's just terrible."

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Rolling Stone also found that several other protest songs have been making their way back onto airwaves, with Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' witnessing a 149 percent jump in streams over the same period - having become a viral soundtrack on TikTok after being used by young people to speak out about racial inequality when charges were filed in the case of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.

Kendrick Lamar's 'Alright' also increased in streams by 71 percent, Public Enemy's 'Fight The Power' by 89 percent, D'Angelo and the Vanguard's 'The Charade' by 122 percent and Killer Mike's 'Don't Die' by a whopping 542 percent.

Topics: Entertainment, News, Music, George Floyd

Jess Hardiman

Jess is a journalist at LADbible who graduated from Manchester University with a degree in Film Studies, English Language and Linguistics - indecisiveness at its finest, right there. She also works for FOODbible and its sister page Seitanists, which are both a safe haven for her to channel a love for homemade pasta, fennel and everything else in between. You can contact Jess at [email protected].

@Jess_Hardiman