Like a dog serving its master, a bootlicker is someone who sucks up to the rulers of this system. Oftentimes they use their “cred” to confuse and mislead the masses, and get them to go along with this system’s crimes. On July 20, the rapper KRS-One was licking the boots of former NYPD cop and current New York City Mayor Eric “Black Giuliani” Adams so hard he must’ve gotten a tongue rash. Watch this shit:

You remember KRS-One, right? The larger than life hip hop lyricist whose 1993 song “Sound of da Police” became an anthem for a whole generation, right next to “Fuck Tha Police” by NWA. “WOOP WOOP, that’s the sound of da police! WOOP WOOP, that’s the sound of da beast!”

Now KRS-One is freestyling for the beast! And calling him “real hip hop!” KRS compares Eric Adams to former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who led a “war on graffiti” in the 1980s and, no joke, literally threatened to unleash wild wolves on graffiti writers in order to clean up the subways. Koch presided over the brutal police murder of 66-year-old, mentally ill Black woman Eleanor Bumpurs in her own home, and many other crimes. But Eric Adams is no different. If anything, his “war on crime,” aka. war on the people, is even WORSE—on the level of former NYC mayor Giuliani’s fascist police crackdown in 1990s.

• Adams is bringing back Stop & Frisk, the Street Crimes Units, solitary confinement at Rikers, and more.
• Adams objectively justified the lynching of homeless Black man Jordan Neely on the subway by a white vigilante, saying “We cannot have people with severe emotional illnesses on our subway system.”
• Adams, himself a former subway cop, directed an assault on homeless and mentally ill people in the subway, arresting people for “crimes” like taking up more than one seat on a train.

The difference between Ed Koch and Eric Adams? Koch was white and Adams is Black. Adams does more “god talk,” puffed up swagger, and even called himself “the hip hop mayor” at this press conference. And apparently that’s enough for KRS-One to start drooling at his boots. Question for KRS-One: Did it make any difference to Tyre Nichols that the five cops who mercilessly beat him to death were Black? Were those cops “real hip hop” too?! 

KRS stands for Knowledge Reigns Supreme, and he wasn’t always so easily bamboozled by the identity politics hustle. He even wrote a song, “Black Cop,” directed at people like Eric Adams. “Black cop! black cop, black cop, black cop, stop shootin black people, we all gonna drop. The black cop is the only real obstacle. Black slave turned black cop is not logical.”

At this press conference Eric Adams actually mentioned this song and quoted the line about Black cops not getting paid a whole lot—as if this song was some kind of appeal for Black cops to have higher salaries, while they keep on murdering Black people!

Adams also talked about how (you can’t make this shit up!) he used to listen to “Fight The Power,” by Public Enemy, over and over again for inspiration. This pig literally IS the power that we need to be fighting!

As we approach the 50th year anniversary of hip hop on August 11,¹ this is another stark reminder that this capitalist-imperialist system has so effectively domesticated, co-opted, and weaponized so much of hip hop against Black people and other oppressed people (especially women)… that you now have multiple rappers (don’t get me started on Ice Cube and Ice T) who used to be anti-police using their “cred” to try to make pigs seem cool, and a brutal pig mayor claiming he’s “fighting the power.” It would be a corny joke if it wasn’t so deadly.

To KRS-One: instead of licking and shining Black Giuliani’s boots, so that he can more effectively shove his boot down harder on the necks of Black and Brown people in New York City, it’s time to wake up and regain your conscience before you become a permanent member of the bootlicker Hall of Shame. We don’t want to have to rename you “IRS” (Ignorance Reigns Supreme), or even worse “KRS-Five-O.”

At the end of “Sound of da Police,” KRS-One poses this question:

My grandfather had to deal with the cops
My great-grandfather dealt with the cops
My great-grandfather had to deal with the cops
And then my great, great, great, great, when it's gonna stop?

Answer: When a revolutionary force of millions rises up to defeat the violent enforcers of this system, abolish all its oppressive institutions, and replace it with a whole new socialist system—with completely different security forces that actually serve and protect the people—working to end all forms of oppression based on class, race, sex, and gender. This revolution is more possible now than it’s ever been, with this system in deep crisis and the Democrat and Republican rulers at each other’s throats. If you are sick of this shit, and don’t want to just keep asking the question “when it’s gonna stop,” generation after generation, you need to be part of this revolution now. And one thing that means is recognizing a bootlicker for what they are, and sweeping them aside.