Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and J. made a name for themselves by being outspoken, creating a genuine counterculture, and connecting to people with their honest experience. That’s because most rappers are incentivized to uphold the status quo and talk about more commercial-friendly things: money, sex, and partying, says Houston. Cole, and Kanye West-seem to be shying away from offering commentary, or doing so with much more reserve and subtlety N.W.A. But all but a few of the most popular artists-Kendrick Lamar, J. The genre was birthed out of politically personal storytelling, and artists from KRS-One to Nas to Talib Kweli to Tef Poe have been carrying that torch for decades. Hip-hop has had a number of socially conscious champions. Recommended: 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' at 10: How a Raunchy Comedy Defined Adulthood At the same time, viewers get to see their disappointment when the two officers accused of attacking King are found not guilty-akin to the reactions of people upset with the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the exoneration of Darren Wilson.īut the film also implicitly raises the question: What do the deaths of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sam Dubose, and countless others mean for hip-hop today? A new generation of rappers today is experiencing what it means to be young and black and have their communities suffer unwelcome surveillance from law enforcement, but where is the mainstream music that represents that struggle?
Straight Outta Compton shows the rappers’ relief that King’s beating was captured on video, as well as their hope for justice-echoing the emergence of dashboard-cam footage and citizen-taped videos of encounters with police. So many moments in the film feel like immediate reflections of American life today.
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When N.W.A.’s manager urges the group to work instead of watching a video of the officers on trial for the Rodney King beatings, they answer: This i s the work. They do it anyway, get arrested, and inspire an audience in Detroit that is navigating a tense racial climate in its own city. During their subsequent tour, the federal government and the Detroit police force threaten legal action if N.W.A. After the confrontation ends with their manager vouching for their presence at the studio, Ice Cube immediately goes in and writes “ Fuck Tha Police,” which catapults N.W.A. Some time later, local police officers accost all five members of the group in front of their recording studio. In the film, Eazy-E is thrown against a cop car as officers insult his mother in front of their home, and the incident opens him to Dre’s idea of investing his drug money into music. When N.W.A.’s manager urges the group to work instead of watching a video of the officers on trial for the Rodney King beatings, they answer: This is the work. He even refers to himself as a journalist who’s “reporting on his community” more honestly than the media itself. “Our art is a reflection of our reality,” says Ice Cube (played by Ice Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr.) in the film. “Rap was the black community’s CNN,” says Akil Houston, a hip-hop scholar, DJ, and assistant professor at Ohio University. Hip hop has historically been one of the ways for black Americans to see a reflection of their lives in mainstream art, and the ’80s and ’90s were no different. Dre's Abuse of Women Is Catching Up With Him Now Dre-were driven to make music by the heavy hand of law enforcement, including the events surrounding the Rodney King beating and the L.A. The biopic highlights how the rappers- particularly the former-drug-dealer-turned-frontman Eazy-E, the hot-tempered lyricist Ice Cube, and the beat master Dr. made inherently political music-and did so while facing the real-life pressures of excessive policing and racism-it’s impossible to watch without seeing Straight Outta Compton’s urgency and relevance. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella and followed their controversial rise to fame. The film arrives to the joy of hip-hop fans, many of whom remember Dr. The biopic chronicling the group’s rise, Straight Outta Compton, comes at a precarious time in the national conversation surrounding racial politics and police violence-one year almost to the day since 19-year-old Michael Brown was killed by an officer in Ferguson.
struggled to navigate life in Compton amid routine police brutality-not unlike many cities today. In 1986, the five black teens who eventually became the legendary rap group N.W.A. A few decades have changed a lot about hip-hop, but arguably not that much about America.
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