briefs
Topic · across the network

Policing

Who enforces order, on whom, and with what consent.

34
briefs
7
subjects
12:16
average
417 min
in total
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music.briefs Music

All 4 in music →
10:00

By All Means Necessary

Boogie Down Productions · 1988

By All Means Necessary is Boogie Down Productions’ 1988 second studio album, released April 12, 1988. KRS-One wrote, produced, and performed every track alone. It features minimalist production and hard-hitting drum beats. Sampling is central: 'My Philosophy' uses Stanley Turrentine’s 'Sister Sanctified'; 'Ya Slippin’' interpolates Deep Purple’s 'Smoke on the Water' and reuses the 'Poetry' beat; 'Stop the Violence' uses Courtney Melody’s 'This Sound a Dem Trouble' riddim; 'Illegal Business' samples Fat Albert’s 'Creativity' and Jefferson Starship’s 'Rock Music'; 'Nervous' samples Rhythm Heritage’s 'Sky’s the Limit' and War’s 'Galaxy'; 'I’m Still #1' samples All the People’s 'Cramp Your Style'. Themes include government and police corruption, safe sex, government involvement in the drug trade, and intra-community violence. It marks KRS-One’s adoption of the 'Teacha' identity and follows DJ Scott La Rock’s murder.

9:23

Run The Jewels 4

Run the Jewels · 2020

RTJ4 is Run the Jewels’ fourth studio album, released digitally on June 3, 2020 — two days ahead of its scheduled June 5 date — as a direct response to nationwide protests against racial injustice. All tracks were produced by El-P, with co-production by Little Shalimar and Wilder Zoby on most. Its cover art was conceived by El-P and realised by Tim Saccenti as a low-poly 3D-printed sculpture of the duo’s logo, photographed under multi-coloured lighting to reference past album palettes. The record is officially titled RTJ4 — the first in the series to use the abbreviated form — and features guest appearances from Greg Nice, DJ Premier, 2 Chainz, Pharrell Williams, Mavis Staples, Josh Homme, and Zack de la Rocha. Its lead singles were 'Yankee and the Brave (ep.4)' and 'Ooh LA LA', and it was performed in full during the voter-engagement YouTube stream Holy Calamavote on October 18, 2020.

12:01

Deeper Than Rap

Rick Ross · 2009

Deeper Than Rap is a 2009 hip-hop album defined by its use of soul and jazz-funk samples, its assertions of status and authority, and its unresolved tension between autobiography and fabrication.

12:03

Straight Outta Compton

N.W.A · 1988

N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton (1988) is a low-budget, high-impact declaration of intent — recorded in six weeks at Audio Achievements Studio in Torrance, California, for $12,000, using TR-808 beats, sampled horns and vocals, and razor-sharp writing by Ice Cube, MC Ren, and The D.O.C. Its sound is sparse, confrontational, and unvarnished. Its ideas are local, immediate, and uncompromising. Its legacy begins not with acclaim, but with backlash — and a warning label.

film.briefs Film

All 25 in film →
13:00

Beyond the Law

Norman Mailer · 1968

Norman Mailer’s 1968 film is a self-financed, largely unscripted experiment set over one night in a Manhattan police station, following detectives and suspects through interrogations, lineups, and personal fallout. Shot with three crews over four nights, it uses improvisation to probe the psychological and ethical continuities between law enforcement and criminality — a theme Mailer pursued across his writing. Though technically rough and narratively diffuse, its rawness serves its purpose: to show power not as policy but as habit, posture, and proximity.

13:00

Code Unknown

Michael Haneke · 2000

Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown (2000) assembles intersecting lives in Paris, Romania and rural France through unedited long takes and strict perspective shifts. Juliette Binoche plays Anne, an actress whose professional command of emotion contrasts with her passivity amid real suffering — a neighbour’s screaming child, a deported homeless woman, her boyfriend’s war trauma. The film refuses exposition or resolution, using structure itself to examine translation, jurisdiction and silence as political conditions. Shot by Jürgen Jürges and edited by Prochaska, Hartusch and Muse, it sustains discomfort without catharsis.

13:00

Cure

Kiyoshi Kurosawa · 1997

A Tokyo detective investigates a string of motiveless murders linked by an 'X' carved into victims and a mysterious man with apparent amnesia. As he traces each killer to the same enigmatic figure, his own grip on memory, motive, and agency begins to fray. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 film treats hypnosis as ambient infection, building dread through repetition, restraint, and the slow erosion of certainty — not through gore or jump-scares, but through the unnerving plausibility of suggestion.

13:00

Deep Cover

Bill Duke · 1992

A Cincinnati police officer goes undercover in Los Angeles to dismantle a drug cartel, only to discover his mission is entangled with State Department interests protecting a South American politician. Directed by Bill Duke and starring Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum, the 1992 neo-noir sustains a tone of institutional weariness, using voice-over, Bojan Bazelli’s shadowed cinematography, and Michel Colombier’s score to trace the slow dissolution of professional conviction. Its strength lies in moral texture, not plot mechanics.

13:00

Fellow Citizen

Abbas Kiarostami · 1983

Fellow Citizen (1983) is Abbas Kiarostami’s 48-minute observational documentary, shot on a Tehran street. It follows a civil servant attempting to regulate pedestrian and vehicle movement, capturing unscripted reactions without narration, interviews or contextual framing. The film’s method is rigorously restrained: fixed camera, natural sound, no edits that conceal time. Its interest lies in behavioural nuance — hesitation, mimicry, negotiation — rather than argument or exposition.

13:00

Homicide

David Mamet · 1991

David Mamet’s 1991 crime drama follows a Jewish homicide detective pulled from a high-profile manhunt into the investigation of an elderly woman’s killing — a case that unravels his assumptions about identity, loyalty, and belonging. With Joe Mantegna, William H. Macy, and Ving Rhames, and shot by Roger Deakins, it trades procedural clarity for psychological precision, using police work as scaffolding for a stark, unsentimental study of assimilation, moral drift, and the cost of choosing between competing claims on the self.

13:00

Humanité

Bruno Dumont · 1999

Bruno Dumont’s 1999 Humanité follows a withdrawn French police lieutenant investigating the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl in rural Bailleul. Shot in natural light with minimal dialogue, it treats the case not as a puzzle but as a rupture in the fabric of daily life — observed with clinical patience, emotional restraint, and profound physical specificity. Emmanuel Schotté and Séverine Caneele deliver unadorned, deeply felt performances; Yves Cape’s cinematography grounds every moment in tangible reality. The film won the Grand Prix at Cannes and remains a defining work of late-20th-century arthouse realism.

13:00

Infernal Affairs

Andrew Lau, Alan Mak · 2002

A Hong Kong police officer and a triad mole spend ten years living each other’s lives, bound by secrecy and surveillance. Directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, the 2002 crime drama uses tight structure, restrained performances, and precise craft to explore identity as performance — not moral failure, but institutional inevitability.

design.briefs Design

All 1 in design →
4:32

Maglite

A flashlight that became a weapon because its materials refused to compromise.

games.briefs Games

All 1 in games →
10:52

Suikoden III

Konami · 2002

Suikoden III is a PlayStation 2 RPG by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo. It uses the Trinity Sight System to rotate control among Hugo, Chris, and Geddoe — each representing one side of a three-way conflict between the Grassland tribes, Zexen, and Harmonia. Protagonists are fully voiced. Recruitment of the 108 Stars of Destiny has no time limits. Combat features tandem front/back row action and chant-interruptible rune magic. Army battles use a node-based grid.

business.briefs Business

All 1 in business →

culture.briefs Culture

All 1 in culture →
8:47

Soft power

Soft power doesn’t persuade — it assumes attraction equals agreement.

fashion.briefs Fashion

All 1 in fashion →
13:47

Hoodie

A garment built for warmth became a screen for society’s anxieties about who belongs — and who must be watched.