FEATURE:
Express Yourself, Something Like That
N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton at Thirty-Five
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WITHOUT question…
one of the most important debut albums – though there was a mixtape released before this album – in Hip-Hop history, N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton is thirty-five in August. It is weird that is came out on the eighth day of the eighth month of 1988! I am not sure if that was deliberate, but it looks pretty cool written down! The iconic group, led by Eazy-E, formed in Los Angeles County's City of Compton in early-1987. The incendiary and hugely influential Straight Outta Compton was produced by group members Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, with words written by members Ice Cube and MC Ren, together with Ruthless rapper The D.O.C. At a time (1988) where Hip-Hop was producing phenomenal albums from the likes of Public Enemy and Beastie Boys, N.W.A provided something different and equally important. If some of their lyrics promoting attacks against the police – in retaliation to their racism and brutality -, might seem problematic today, it was a call to action at a time when the Black population were being attacked and victimised. Because of the lyrical content, Straight Outta Compton did not get a lot of radio play beyond L.A. That said, it went platinum (one million copies) by July 1989. In just under a year, this phenomenal debut album was a major commercial success. N.W.A helped to move the genre’s players towards Hardcore and Gangsta Rap. Straight Outta Compton has been reissued before, so I am not sure whether there will be another one ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary. In 2015, there was the theatrical release of the biographical film, Straight Outta Compton. Sales of the album boomed again. Inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 (the first Rap album to achieve that), in 2017, the Library of Congress included Straight Outta Compton in the National Recording Registry – for work that is deemed it to be ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’.
Probably best known for its eponymous opening track and Express Yourself, there are some great songs on Straight Outta Compton that might have passed you by. That is fair enough, as it is very hard to get many of the songs on the radio. I especially love If It Ain't Ruff and Quiet On tha Set. One big reason the album is so important and popular is because of its use of samples. A golden age where many of Hip-Hop’s finest combined samples of older songs into something new, N.W.A even included Beastie Boys on 8 Ball – Remix (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!), The New Style, Girls, Paul Revere and Hold It Now, Hit It). Before getting to some reviews for Straight Outta Compton, there is a retrospective feature I want to bring in. Albumism revisited this 1988 landmark album on its thirtieth anniversary:
“Straight Outta Compton is one of the rare albums that changed the direction of hip-hop music. As a group, the history of N.W.A (aka N***az With Attitude) has been well-documented, subject to countless interviews, articles, books, feature films, and documentaries. They are probably one of the most studied rap groups ever, and Straight Outta Compton, released 30 years ago, is the central reason for their fame.
It’s not accurate to say that N.W.A created “gangsta” rap. Its origins date back to the mid-1980s with artists like Philadelphia’s Schoolly-D and fellow Los Angeles rapper Ice-T, among others. But it is accurate to say that with Straight Outta Compton, N.W.A took gangsta rap and sharpened it into a weapon. Or more accurately, turned it into a heavy cudgel to beat their critics into submission.
In retrospect, N.W.A’s lineup was practically a murderer’s row of creative rappers, producers, DJs, and innovators. Made up of Eric “Eazy-E” Wright, Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson, Lorenzo “MC Ren” Patterson, Antoine “DJ Yella” Carraby, and Mik “Arabian Prince” Lezan. Of those six, Eazy-E was the certified gangsta. While other members of the group were known to get into a little trouble, Eazy was a dope dealer that took his ill-gotten gains and funneled it into a record label, Ruthless Records, so that it could release music recorded by himself and his friends.
By all accounts, none of the members of the group truly realized the impact that Straight Outta Compton would have. Dre has said it took him only a few days to put together all the beats for the album. Studio sessions were fueled by liquor and weed. But what emerged was perhaps the most influential hip-hop album ever recorded. It started Dr. Dre down the path toward becoming an influential industry mogul and the most recognizable hip-hop producer ever. It helped make Ice Cube the powerful pop culture presence he is today. And it got the group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame back in 2015.
Back when Straight Outta Compton was first released, N.W.A began calling themselves “The World’s Most Dangerous Group.” Whether or not that’s completely legitimate, it gets to the heart of N.W.A’s appeal and what made them so different. In 2018, rap music is ridiculously mainstream, but 30 years ago, most people didn’t know what to make of it. Hip-Hop was dismissed as noise created by guys who didn’t know how to play instruments. And into that environment stepped N.W.A, six young Black men, decked out in all black, cursing, calling themselves “n***as,” brandishing firearms, and showing a total lack of respect for any of the traditional institutions of the day. It made their music seem threatening. Uncomfortable. Dangerous. It’s this sense of danger that’s sorely missing in the rap music of today.
Straight Outta Compton spawned a surge in the West Coast sound, both in Southern and Northern California, and rappers from throughout the country have continued to draw on the album consistently as a source of inspiration. It’s hard to imagine rappers like 2Pac, Migos, or Kendrick Lamar around without N.W.A to lead the way.
It’s safe to say that N.W.A never set out to be a “revolutionary” group. In fact, I’m pretty sure if you time-traveled back to 1988 and told Eazy-E and Dr. Dre that N.W.A was revolutionary, they probably would have laughed in your face. But the group was revolutionary in their own subversive way. Their music wasn’t always pretty, and it was often extremely antagonistic, but it fundamentally changed the way hip-hop music was recorded and received”.
At a time when nothing like N.W.A’s debut exists in Hip-Hop, I wonder what its lasting legacy is. If it is difficult picking up direct influences in new Hip-Hop, it definitely inspired those going forward. Because there are a lot of misogynistic lyrics through Straight Outta Compton is worrying, but it was (sadly) a problem that existed right throughout the genre – and it still pervades towards. If some of the lyrics should definitely not be followed or taken to heart, there is a lot in this seismic album to love. Its sense of humour and inventiveness is to be admired. I hope that a new breed of Hip-Hop artists feel influenced and inspired by 1988’s Straight Outta Compton. Pitchfork reviewed the album when it was reissued in 2003. One cannot ignore the controversial lyrical content. Its mix of playfulness and brutality is a major reason why it created such shockwaves:
“Last week I was buying some detergent at a local laundromat in rural Nebraska. This is what was occupying my mind: "See, I don't give a fuck, that's the problem/ I see a motherfuckin' cop, I don't dodge him." Now, based on my limited experience with law enforcement, I've found most cops to be cordial, beneficent protectors of the law. Yet, at that moment, I didn't just want to fuck tha police, both physically and figuratively; I wanted them lynched, drenched in gasoline, and burnt alive. It's one thing to get a catchy couplet stuck in teenagers' heads; it's another to convert half the nation into murderous psychopaths hell-bent on riot and rape. N.W.A. accomplished the latter.
Straight Outta Compton was not the first gangsta-rap album, nor was it the first album to use such disconcerting and scabrous blasts of sound, but the music was revolutionary for two reasons. First, Dre and Yella took the vitriolic, cacophonous rampage of Public Enemy and discarded all the motivation and history behind the anger; second, they sampled laid-back jazz, psychoastral-lovetron p-funk, sweetly romantic soul, naïve doo-wop, Martha Reeves, Charles Wright and Marvin Gaye, and proceeded to lay it under the most gruesome narratives imaginable, dead ho's and cop killers. This is tantamount to using a "Happy B-Day, Grandma" Hallmark card to inform a family you just slaughtered their grandmother. It's cruel, duplicitous, perverse, horrifying, hilarious.
In some ways, Straight Outta Compton is the archetypal rap album, the one you would send into space if you wanted to ignite a stellar holocaust. It unites the paranoia of It Takes a Nation of Millions with the chill of The Chronic, while still retaining an old-school, Run-DMC-style playfulness. The opening squall of "Straight Outta Compton", "Fuck tha Police", and "Gangsta Gangsta" is still as confrontational and decimating as it was at the dawn of the 1990s. The bass throttles, the funk combusts, and the sirens deafen as Eazy-E dispenses with tired romantic clichés: "So what about the bitch who got shot? Fuck her!/ You think I give a damn about a bitch? I ain't no sucker!" And this is the least misogynistic of N.W.A.'s albums.
In the remaining ten tracks, the group depicts a paranoid, conspiratorial wasteland where cops "think every nigga is sellin' narcotics," where they often are selling narcotics to buy gats to kill cops, where bitches have two functions in life-- to suck dick and get shot when they stop-- and where there are two only professions: bein' a punk and shootin' punks. The mind itself is a ghetto, and the ghetto is universal. A lot of people, for whatever reason, take offense to such ideas. William S. Burroughs writes the same thing and gets hailed as the greatest writer of the twentieth century. There is no hope, no messages, no politics, rarely an explicit suggestion of irony. The only respite is "Express Yourself", the sweetest anti-drug song to ever take place in a correctional facility. Musically, the rhythm pummels and the scratches are strong but sparse; lyrically, Dre says it best: "It gets funky when you got a subject and a predicate." For all the genius, there are some tracks that simply can't compare to the classics. "If It Ain't Ruff", "8 Ball", and "Dopeman" are triumphant rap songs, but they consist of minimalist beats and the silly battle raps that N.W.A. helped eliminate”.
I will finish off with an AllMusic review. Whereas other Hip-Hop and Rap albums of that era has bigger or slicker production values, they note how things on Straight Outta Compton are more bare-boned and simplistic. N.W.A creating this fairly inexpensive and unshowy debut. With one of the best and most powerful opening three songs – Straight Outta Compton, Fuck tha Police, Gangsta Gangsta – in music history, Straight Outta Compton is a landmark album that will be studied for generations more:
“Straight Outta Compton wasn't quite the first gangsta rap album, but it was the first one to find a popular audience, and its sensibility virtually defined the genre from its 1988 release on. It established gangsta rap -- and, moreover, West Coast rap in general -- as a commercial force, going platinum with no airplay and crossing over with shock-hungry white teenagers. Unlike Ice-T, there's little social criticism or reflection on the gangsta lifestyle; most of the record is about raising hell -- harassing women, driving drunk, shooting it out with cops and partygoers. All of that directionless rebellion and rage produces some of the most frightening, visceral moments in all of rap, especially the amazing opening trio of songs, which threaten to dwarf everything that follows. Given the album's sheer force, the production is surprisingly spare, even a little low-budget -- mostly DJ scratches and a drum machine, plus a few sampled horn blasts and bits of funk guitar. Although they were as much a reaction against pop-friendly rap, 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. Although Cube wrote some of his bandmates' raps, including nearly all of Eazy-E's, each member has a distinct delivery and character, and the energy of their individual personalities puts their generic imitators to shame. But although Straight Outta Compton has its own share of posturing, it still sounds refreshingly uncalculated because of its irreverent, gonzo sense of humor, still unfortunately rare in hardcore rap. There are several undistinguished misfires during the second half, but they aren't nearly enough to detract from the overall magnitude. It's impossible to overstate the enduring impact of Straight Outta Compton; as polarizing as its outlook may be, it remains an essential landmark, one of hip-hop's all-time greatest”.
On 8th August, 1988, an album arrived that changed the face of Hip-Hop! With just over an hour of the most urgent and eye-opening lyrics ever committed to paper, N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton is as much a documentation of the present as it was a warning for the future. Sadly, like so many Hip-Hop albums, the lyrics are relevant today. If it influenced a lot of other artists and created positivity in that respect, how many world leaders and people in power have responded and reacted to N.W.A’s songs?! A Hip-Hop masterpiece, there is no doubting the fact that N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton is…
ONE of the genre’s most important works.