wishes a policeman's death. In October 1992, rapper Tupac Shakur, Interscope Records, and Time Warner had been sued for the April 11 fatal shooting of a Texas Highway Patrol officer. In June 1992, homicide on an undercover, corrupt detective already themed Dre's debut solo single "Deep Cover," a hit issued in April—by Dick Griffey's SOLAR Records, a soul label in Los Angeles, via Epic Records under major label Sony Music—but national outrage arose, instead, about a March release by a side project of L.A.'s original gangsta rapper, Ice T. "Cop Killer," on his band Body Count's eponymous album of heavy metal music, was condemned by US Vice President Dan Quayle, US President George H. W. Bush, and the NRA. Time Warner, also owning the Six Flags amusement parks, faced boycott threats. By August, about 1 000 stores withdrew the album. Sire Records, whose roster included Madonna as well as Ice T since his 1987 debut in major distribution, cancelled his new rap album. In January 1993, Sire's owner, Warner Brothers Records—itself owned by Warner Music—freed all Body Count artists from contract. Yet after The Chronic, despite a related, civilian homicide in June 1993, opposition regrouped about misogyny. Harlem rallies On Sunday, May 9, 1993, in his Mother's Day sermon, senior pastor Calvin Butts—leading the Abyssinian Baptist Church, in New York City's Harlem section—vowing a symbolic act, solicited offending music samples. Butts thus became the first black public figure to decry gangsta rap. On Saturday, June 5, amid a few hundred supporters outside of Abyssinian—historically the city's largest and preeminent black church—Reverend Butts, as vowed, mounted a steamroller. But dozens of counterprotesters, decrying censorship, blocked its path. One shouted, "You're steamrolling our dreams," and "who we are." Another alleged, "He's attacking us black rappers," not "the white power structure." Skipping ahead to the preplanned finale, then, Butts and followers, taking the boxes of CDs and tapes unexpectedly unscathed, boarded a bus to Midtown Manhattan. On the 550 Madison Avenue sidewalk, they laid, and some trampled, the boxes of gangsta rap. There, at Sony Music headquarters, "representative of an industry which," Butts felt, "laughs at black people all the way to the bank," he blared, over megaphone, "Recognize that this poison kills!" But that summer in Harlem, young men casually wore T-shirts emblazoned Bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks. Eventually, some two dozen women organized, and for three days on the