Reality rap
It’s impossible to watch Straight Outta Compton and not think of Ferguson or #BlackLivesMatter. But this is not explicitly a movie about politics or racial justice. It’s a music biopic about the rap group N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes), and at heart it’s about creativity, art, and the quest to say or do something real.
Perfecting a style its members called reality rap (which came to be know as gangsta rap or hardcore rap), N.W.A. shook up the music industry and the broader culture with songs about the experiences of young, poor black males in the inner city back when “inner city” was code for urban blight and social disintegration (not lofts and gentrification). Against critiques that they were glorifying violence, members of N.W.A. insisted that they were simply reflecting the extreme inequality, poverty, police violence, and gang violence that the musicians experienced growing up in Compton, California, in the Reagan era.
Straight Outta Compton thrums with the energy of this controversy. The main characters are introduced in tight narrative set pieces that give us glimpses of both Compton life and the characters’ unique personalities: Eric Wright (“Easy-E,” played by Jason Mitchell) is quick on his feet, dodging bullets in a drug house. Andre Young (“Dr. Dre,” played by Corey Hawkins) wears a sparkling tux jacket as he mixes beats at a local club for a boss who doesn’t appreciate his genius. O’Shea Jackson (“Ice Cube,” played by O’Shea Jackson Jr.) is curled over a tattered black-and-white composition book as he pens rap lyrics on the bus. Their stories intertwine as they experiment with the idea of doing something “new and big.” When they enter the studio to record what will become their first hit, “Boyz-n-the-Hood,” I was on the edge of my seat.
