The birthplace of gangsta rap—Compton, California, was a place angels feared to tread. In the mid-1980s, America became aware of its very own nightmarish thug life, festering not far from the Hollywood Hills.
Los Angeles, 1986. Picture, if you will, gangs called Blood Stone Villains, and the Rollin‘ ’60s Crips. Picture insanely bouncing “Kandy-Kolored, Tangerine-Flake” lowrider vintage Chevy Impalas, with mega-bass car-speakers blasting monster funk by Zapp (band) down Crenshaw Boulevard in the 100-degree California dusk.
It was a time when terms like “gat” and “bust a cap” entered the vernacular, gangs packed military-grade weaponry, and the “heaviosity” of gangsta rap inexorably began transmogrifying the USA into a hip-hop nation.
Censored
The origin of the black-and-white “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” sticker can be traced to former Vice President Al Gore’s wife Tipper listening to Prince’s song “Darling Nikki,” but N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” was one of the first albums to get label-slapped with a resounding “thwack!” heard around the globe.
Why? It had harsh words unfit for children’s ears, certainly. But it also told grim truths about a little-known, deadly lifestyle. Such was the forbidden ghetto journalism of trailblazing hip-hop/rap group N.W.A.
‘Straight Outta Compton’
Endorsed by the band itself, “Straight Outta Compton” is the excellent chronicling of the rise and fall of N.W.A. It stars among others, the now legendary N.W.A. lyricist Ice Cube’s son, O'Shea Jackson Jr., who’s the spitting image of his famous dad, and is filmed by the same director who filmed junior’s dad in Ice Cube’s breakout comedy, “Friday.”
O‘Shea senior was the group’s undisputed powerhouse charismatic star. His incendiary, prescient poetry shows—as depicted here—how little has changed racially in certain respects, in America, since the album for which the movie is named came out in ’88.
Spanning roughly 10 years, “Straight Outta Compton” focuses on three members of N.W.A: entrepreneurial drug dealer Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), lyricist Ice Cube, and DJ Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins).
They and the other two band members, MC Ren (Aldis Hodge), and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) formed the band, the acronym of which is now, 30 years later, widely known not to mean “No Whites Allowed.”
