Eazy E Gangsta Gangsta Remix
Spencer Prather
Straight Outta Compton is the debut studio album by American gangsta rap group N.W.A, which, led by Eazy-E, formed in Los Angeles County's City of Compton in early 1987.[3][4] Released by his label, Ruthless Records, on August 8, 1988,[1] the album was produced by N.W.A members Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, with lyrics written by N.W.A members Ice Cube and MC Ren[5] along with Ruthless rapper and unofficial member The D.O.C.[3] Not merely depicting Compton's street violence, the lyrics repeatedly threaten to lead it by attacking peers and even police. The track "Fuck tha Police" drew an FBI agent's warning letter, which aided N.W.A's notoriety, with N.W.A calling itself "the world's most dangerous group."[3][6][7]
In July 1989, despite its scarce radio play beyond the Los Angeles area,[4] Straight Outta Compton received gangsta rap's first platinum certification, one million copies sold by then.[3] That year, the album peaked at number 9 on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and at number 37 on the Billboard 200.[8] Receiving media spotlight, N.W.A's example triggered the rap genre's movement toward hardcore, gangsta rap.[9]
Remastered, the album's September 2000 reissue gained four bonus tracks. Nearing the album's 20th anniversary, another extended version of it arrived in December 2007.[10] In 2015, after an album reissue on red cassettes,[11] theater release of the biographical film Straight Outta Compton reinvigorated sales of the album, which by year's end was certified 3x Multi-Platinum.[3] In 2016, it became the first rap album inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[12] The next year, the Library of Congress enshrined Straight Outta Compton in the National Recording Registry, who have deemed it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[13]
For most of the 1980s, New York City, the birthplace of hip hop,[14] remained the rap genre's dominant scene.[15] Los Angeles County was secondary.[16] Until 1988, the Los Angeles hip hop scene, retaining more of hip hop's dance and party origin, prioritized DJs and DJ crews as the central players in hip hop;[17] the prevailing style at the time was electro rap and "funk hop",[18] similar to the New York-based 1982 hit "Planet Rock".[15] By contrast, East Coast hip hop had moved to prioritizing the lyricist (or "MC") after the success of Run-DMC's self-titled 1984 album.[16]
As the 1980s continued, it became increasingly popular to record lyrics on top of electro rap music. The World Class Wreckin' Cru, which included Dr. Dre and DJ Yella, published the West Coast's first rap album to be released under a major record label.[16] Also among LA's rising lyricists was Ice-T. Inspired by Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D's 1985 single "P.S.K. What Does It Mean?"[16][15][19] Ice-T released the track "6 in the Mornin'" in 1986. This song began to pull the Los Angeles scene's attention away from electro rap; it reached gold sales and inaugurated a new rap subgenre, later called "gangsta rap".[16][15]
In 1986, Eric Wright, a Kelly Park Compton Crip, formed Ruthless Records, an independent record label based in Compton.[16] Through drug dealing, Wright had become acquainted with Dr. Dre and Arabian Prince, a pair of locally successful record producers and recording artists who were struggling to receive royalties.[20] Wright recruited the South Central Los Angeles-based rapper Ice Cube, then a member of rap group C.I.A., as a ghostwriter, and instructed him to collaborate with Dr. Dre and write a song for the label. The resulting track was "Boyz-n-the-Hood".[21] This song was originally intended to be performed by a New York-based group who were signed to Ruthless Records; however, after that group rejected the song, Wright adopted the stage name Eazy-E and performed the rapping himself.[18][21] Released under the name N.W.A, "Boyz-n-the-Hood" became a local hit, despite criticism that it sounded similar to Schoolly D's "P.S.K." single, and that its tempo was too slow to dance to.[15]
Expanding upon Ice-T's model, N.W.A imparted to gangsta rap a signature style that featured "exaggerated descriptions of street life, militant resistance to authority, and outright sexist violence".[22] N.W.A further strove to secure radio play by supplying radio edits of their music to local stations such as KDAY.[4] Despite these efforts, N.W.A's national debut, Straight Outta Compton, saw virtually no radio play; even so, the album was hugely successful, selling one million copies and becoming the first gangsta rap album to be certified platinum.[16][23] As rap fans, even from afar, sought more from Compton and South Central,[24] local rappers, like MC Eiht of Compton's Most Wanted, met the call.[25] The Los Angeles rap scene rapidly moved from party rap to hardcore rap.[16]
On the global stage, N.W.A towered as gangsta rap's icons. The group's profane, unrelentingly violent lyrics led to backlash from law enforcement and other groups: an FBI agent sent the record label a warning letter, MTV banned the "Straight Outta Compton" video, some venues banned N.W.A performance, and some police officers refused to work security at N.W.A shows elsewhere.[3][23][26] The controversy served to further bolster N.W.A's anti-establishment image, and so the rappers would highlight it themselves in later tracks.[3][27]
The album was recorded and produced in Audio Achievements Studio in Torrance, California for $12,000. Dr. Dre, in a 1993 interview, recalls, "I threw that thing together in six weeks so we could have something to sell out of the trunk.[3]
In an incident recalled in Jerry Heller's book and later portrayed in the film Straight Outta Compton, police approached the group while they were standing outside the studio in the fall of 1987 and demanded them to get on their knees and show ID without explanation. Outraged by the experience, Cube began writing the lyrics that would become "Fuck tha Police."[29] Initially, still spending weekends in jail over traffic violations, Dre was reluctant to do "Fuck tha Police", a reluctance that dissolved once that sentence concluded.[3]
The album's producers were Dr. Dre with DJ Yella and Arabian Prince. Its production was mostly sampled horn blasts, some funk guitar riffs, sampled vocals, and turntable scratches atop a drum machine.[24] Their drum machine, used for kick, was the Roland TR-808.[30]
N.W.A's Ice Cube and MC Ren along with Ruthless Records rapper The D.O.C. wrote the lyrics, including those rapped by Eazy-E and by Dr. Dre.[3] On the other hand, DJ Yella never raps, and Arabian Prince does only minor vocals on "Something 2 Dance 2". Otherwise, each group member stands out through a solo rap, too.
MC Ren has two solo tracks, "If It Ain't Ruff" and "Quiet on tha Set". Dr. Dre dominates "Express Yourself". Ice Cube's is "I Ain't tha 1". Eazy-E's is a remix of "8 Ball", a track which originally appeared on N.W.A's 1987 debut compilation album N.W.A. and the Posse. The one guest is The D.O.C., who raps the opening verse of "Parental Discretion Iz Advised".
Whereas Ren wrote his own lyrics, and The D.O.C. wrote many of Eazy's lyrics, Cube wrote his lyrics, and both Dre's and Eazy's as well.[24] Still, even Eazy and Dre, alike Cube and Ren, each brings a distinct delivery and character, making N.W.A altogether stand out from imitators.[24]
The term "gangsta rap", soon to arise in journalism, had not been coined yet.[3] According to Ice Cube, the rappers themselves called it "reality rap".[3] Indicting N.W.A as its leading example, journalist David Mills, in 1990, acknowledges, "The hard-core street rappers defend their violent lyrics as a reflection of 'reality'. But for all the gunshots they mix into their music, rappers rarely try to dramatize that reality" empathetically. "It's easier for them to imagine themselves pulling the trigger."[35] Still, the year before, Bud Norman, reviewing in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, assesses that on Straight Outta Compton, "they don't make it sound like much fun".[36] In Norman's view, "They describe it with the same nonjudgmental resignation that a Kansan might use about a tornado."[36] Steve Huey, writing for AllMusic, considered that "Straight Outta Compton's insistent claims of reality ring a little hollow today, since it hardly ever depicts consequences. But despite all the romanticized invincibility, the force and detail of Ice Cube's writing makes the exaggerations resonate."[24]
By 1991, while criticizing group members for allegedly carrying misogynist lyrics into real life, Newsweek incidentally comments that Straight Outta Compton, nonetheless, "introduced some of the most grotesquely exciting music ever made".[33] Writing in retrospect, Steve Huey, in AllMusic, deems the album mainly just "raising hell" while posturing, but finds that "it still sounds refreshingly uncalculated because of its irreverent, gonzo sense of humor, still unfortunately rare in hardcore rap".[24] In the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide, Roni Sarig states that although Straight Outta Compton was viewed as a "perversion" of the "more politically sophisticated" style of hip hop exemplified by Public Enemy, the album displays "a more righteous fury than the hundreds of copycats it spawned".[50]
The first rap album ever to gain five stars from Rolling Stone at initial review, it placed 70th among the magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in its 2020 revised list.[58] Time, in 2006, named it one of the 100 greatest albums of all time.[59] Vibe appraised it as one of the 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century.[60] In 2012, Slant Magazine listed it 18th among the "Best Albums of the 1980s".[28] In any case, in November 2016, Straight Outta Compton became the first rap album inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[12] In 2017, Straight Outta Compton was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, who deemed it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[61]
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