Single of the Week: Body Count – Black Hoodie

Rappers speak on police brutality and racism constantly, but rarely do they do it with a ’90s metal band shredding away in the background. Sure, Run DMC and Aerosmith teamed up, as did Cypress Hill and Slash and if you’ve never heard Public Enemy and Anthrax’s version of ‘Bring Tha Noize, you should fix that immediately.

This is a different animal altogether. Ice T founded Body Count in 1990, first finding major notoriety with 1992’s ‘Cop Killer’, which ended up becoming something of a rap-metal send-up to ‘Fuck Tha Police’. The band has been releasing material fairly consistently since then, even producing a track for Gears of War 3, just to add weirdness to weirdness.

A new album is on the way, and last month the band brought out a track which was alarmingly titled ‘No Lives Matter’. It took the issues which fuel the Black Lives Matter movement and examined them, then expanded on them, with Ice T speaking on the oppression of not only black people, but all poor Americans.

It got people talking, and as you can imagine it was always going to be a hard act to follow, but ‘Black Hoody’ does it. This brutal, brass knuckled metal track is almost an autopsy on the whole concept of a police shooting and it pulls no punches. Ice T’s vocal style is sometimes mismatched with the music behind it but here it’s better than ever, largely because you can tell that he really gives a fuck about the things he’s screaming about.

 

The album, Bloodlust, comes out on Friday (March 31st). Pre-order it here.

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