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MUSIC FEATURE
BOYZ N THE HOOD
Of course it all went sour fairly quickly for
N.W.A. with arguments, solo careers and the
death in ‘93 of founder, the group’s rapper and
Ruthless Records’ boss Eazy-E.
But in their short span they produced one
masterpiece, that debut Straight Outta Compton ,
and then when they went their separate ways,
some impressive solo albums.
Dr Dre might be better known as a producer
and businessman (Aftermath Records, Beats
Electronics) but his album The Chronic (1992) is
a G-funk classic (with Snoop Dogg) and the new
star-stacked Compton (with Eminem, The Game,
Snoop and Xzibit among others) was inspired by
him seeing the early rushes of the film.
Cube’s debut solo album AmeriKKKa’s Most
Wanted in 1990 (with the Bomb Squad who
produced Public Enemy albums, and it has
cameos by Flavor Flav and Chuck D) is also
a cornerstone hip-hop album. His Death Certificate
of the following year is one of the toughest in a
very tough genre, too.
Eazy-E’s solo debut Eazy-Duz-It (1988) is
perhaps his defining moment but later work
includes a fair amount of name-calling and
provocations towards Dre and others.
That stuff doesn’t age well.
But if the film allows us to go back to a
time when gangsta rap was calling the shots,
then it has done its job . . . and the best of
gangsta is among the best there is.
Certainly a way to get your head straight
again after you’ve watched an episode
of Ice Loves Coco.
Dr Dre from N.W.A. being millionaires
— it’s hard to appreciate the angry vibe and
context of early gangsta rap. But consider this:
N.W.A.’s debut album Straight Outta Compton
in 1988 came out the same year as George
Michael’s Faith, Madonna’s You Can Dance
and Michael Jackson pretending to be Bad.
Oh, and it was the time of DJ Jazzy
Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
Of course you can get a better idea of the
headspace of the era with the new movie
Straight Outta Compton which tells — in
cinematic terms at least — the N.W.A. story as
they want it told, because Dr Dre and Ice Cube
were executive producers. It is “sanitised and
over-dramatised” according to NME, but has
been a runaway success in the US and
throws the spotlight on an
important period in rap and
musical history.
Graham Reid looks back on N.W.A. and gangsta rap.
visit
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But if the film allows us to go
back to a time when gangsta
rap was calling the shots, then
it has done its job . . . and the
best of gangsta is among
the best there is.
W hen Ice-T boldly announced that
gangsta rap was the CNN of the
ghetto suburbs, one wit hit back
saying — given the cliched posing with guns
and chains and the sneering attitude — that it
was actually more like the Cartoon Network.
Of course things change fast in popular
culture and before long the writer Ned Sublett
in his excellent book about New Orleans and
the hip-hop culture there TheYear Before the
Flood noted that it was rappers who became
“the stars [not the innovative beat-makers]
and are necessarily extroverted, often to the
point of hyper-assholery, and who can be
brilliant poets as well as frustratingly thick
and sometimes really have been the
criminals they claim to be”.
It was the criminal character and caricatures
of gangsta rap that offended many in the late
80s, and not just white conservatives but black
liberals (among them Bill Cosby) who felt that
it ran counter to any progress made by the
Civil Rights Movement and played into the
hands of white stereotypes of black youth.
That may well be true but getting hung
up on image and especially language
— and there was plenty of X-rated language to
get sweaty about — does make you
deaf to the message.
And the message of gangsta rap could
not be more clear.
A few years on from Mel Melle saying
“Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the
edge” in The Message , Public Enemy
and N.W.A (whose names told you all
you needed to know) said it was too
late. Their people felt pushed and
were now fighting back. F*** tha
Police as N.W.A. announced.
Racist police and oppression
were in the sightlines and
the broadcasts on the CNN
from the ghetto became
mainstream news.
These days of
course — with Ice-T
an actor (and star
of his own awful
reality show Ice
Loves Coco) and
both Ice Cube and
For more reviews,
overviews and
interviews by
Graham Reid see:
SEPTEMBER 2015