"Buck a Cop" - China Mac

Given the brisk pace of killings by police officers this year, it was pretty fucking inevitable that this would happen. And rest assured, it will happen again. Back in August we featured an entertaining UK jam called "All Cops Are Bastards," but that was more socio-political critique type shit. This right here? This an open provocation to kill police officers.

It's easy to take that stance, of course. Body Count's 1991 pop masterpiece "Cop Killer" established a pretty clear precedent on this one. The notion that Ice-T dealt with a "backlash" is fucking absurd: he made millions on tour while a bunch of police unions made token gestures of protest, and now decades later Ice-T plays a cop on TV. Perhaps China Mac will mellow out in his old age, too, but for now, this is some snarling entertainment.

This cat has a big image problem, insofar as he raps a lot tougher than he looks. It is also interesting that he identifies as Asian American but looks like an Italian model. A lot of crackers love to say they "don't see race" and this is a rare case where that would actually be true: hopefully the Gawker crowd can give this cat a couple million YouTube plays and embrace his multi-cultural message.

The video is tightly edited, beautifully shot, very energetic, but ultimately just surreal. An absurd juxtaposition of powerful images and trite lyrics. That's not a dismissal, though: this could easily be the most emblematic video of 2014. Use the hashtag, like it on Facebook, buy the shirt. This is politics now.