In Rap, The Mexican South Has Got Something To Say

Kap’s song “Fuck La Policia” isn’t riotous or loud. Over a pan flute-embellished beat that sounds like a day that’s sunny and humid, but oppressively so, Kap sounds dejected but firm. He tells a story about being young and mistreated by police — “I know what you thinking / Think I got no Green Card” — that’s no less relatable because it comes specifically from the perspective of a Mexican-American. Kap wrote the song the morning after being pulled over in Atlanta suburb Forest Park. “They always pull people over,” he told BuzzFeed last week. “They didn’t have no probable cause and I didn’t like it. They were abusing their power.”

There’s a lot of story packed into “Fuck La Policia.” Kap charges cops with assuming he’s not an American citizen, or that he sells drugs, or that his friends must be in gangs. But the song’s overall tone is one of general frustration and dissatisfaction, not tidy accusation. “All this happened last night / I don’t need your advice / I don’t got my pistol on me / Quit flashing your flashlight,” Kap raps, like a spokesperson for any kid who’s ever been fed up with authority.

Kap G’s parents emigrated to Georgia from Mexico in the ’90s, when the population of Mexican-born immigrants in Georgia and the U.S. was growing rapidly. Kap isn’t fluent in Spanish and his parents aren’t fluent in English; he says their support has been a crucial part of his success, but that they can’t analyze his lyrics. Kap was born in Atlanta, and raised in the city’s predominantly black College Park neighborhood. He recently graduated from Tri-Cities High School, the same neighborhood school attended by the members of OutKast, the rap duo who helped legitimize Southern rap nationwide and encouraged listeners to embrace being different in the ’90s and ’00s. “It was always: Mexicans sit with the Mexicans, black people sit with the black people; that was just how it was,” Kap said, describing the Tri-Cities cafeteria. “But I was the one who was probably sitting with the black people.”

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