Ice-T's song Cop Killer is as bad as they come. This is black anger -- raw, rude and cruel -- and one reason the song's so shocking is that in postliberal America, black anger is virtually taboo. You won't find it on TV, not on the McLaughlin Group or Crossfire, and certainly not in the placid features of Arsenio Hall or Bernard Shaw. It's been beaten back into the outlaw subcultures of rap and rock, where, precisely because it is taboo, it sells. And the nastier it is, the faster it moves off the shelves. As Ice-T asks in another song...
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