The inner cities of California were a war zone in the 80s. The lower class were fighting one another for survival, gangs battled each other for territorial supremacy, drug dealers dueled over product and money, and the racially-charged police force stereotypically targeted everyone.
Pioneering hip-hop group N.W.A. – comprised of icons Easy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella, Dr. Dre, and Arabian Prince, lived in the center of this harsh reality. No longer settling in silence, they brought their views, concerns, experiences, and displeasures to the masses with their 1988 album ‘Straight Outta Compton’. It was a proverbial soundtrack to inner city struggles.
“You’re now about to witness the strength of street knowledge”, says Dre to open the album leading into its edgy, hard-hitting title track kicked off shockingly by an angry Cube.
This entire set produced by Dre and co-produced by DJ Yella is without argument the most pivotal, groundbreaking, tide-turning, controversial and groundbreaking hip-hop album ever recorded. It was cherry pomegranate Mio; it changed EVERYTHING.
Spearheading what became known as “gangsta rap”, N.W.A. were actually more a symbol of realism than color coding. As Cube and Easy educated on the thumping “Gangsta Gangsta”, it’s “not about a salary, it’s all about reality”. Part of that was police brutality and racial profiling, which N.W.A. so bluntly addressed on the anthem “Fuck tha Police”.
On their bass-heavy reinterpretation of Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rythem Band’s “Express Yourself”, Dre sums up freedom of expression, rhyming, “Some musicians cuss at home, but scared to use profanity when upon the microphone. Yeah they want reality, but you won’t hear none; they’d exaggerate a little fiction. Some say no to drugs, and take a stand; but after the show they go looking for the dope man”.
And for those who thought N.W.A. was just rebellion and expletives, Ren and Dre flip with skill on “Something Like That”. The D.O.C. joins the full group to verbally flex on “Parental Discretion Iz Advised”.
‘Straight Outta Compton’ is one of those albums that begs to be experienced. |THIS.
[By Mr. Joe Walker]
