![]() ![]() They witnessed the dramatic rise in gang violence connected to it and felt the LAPD’s heavy-handed response. The resulting poverty and unemployment proved fertile ground for the influx of cocaine in the early 1980s. NWA’s core members grew up in Compton and South Central neighborhoods that had been devastated by massive deindustrialization. ![]() On tracks like Gangsta Gangsta Ice Cube might have sounded invincible – “I’m the type of nigga that’s built to last / Fuck with me, I’ll put my foot in your ass” – but all of that bravado masked real social insecurity. Nonetheless, the larger-than-life personas populating NWA’s recordings spoke to complicated realities. kelosscross/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND An underlying social message Music fans ate it up: the album went double platinum and encouraged music industry executives to focus on developing more hardcore acts. Straight Outta Compton played to their shrill, pervasive fears about gang violence, offering outsiders a vicarious look into a neighborhood most had only heard about on the nightly news. In truth, the only rap sheets NWA members had were notebooks full of song lyrics.Īlthough the group often claimed they were simply “street reporters,” the violent gang- and drug-filled world of their music ignored more prosaic aspects of Compton, such as its single-family homes and history as a black, middle-class enclave.īut in segregated Los Angeles, whites often avoided predominantly black communities and viewed black youth suspiciously. Understanding intuitively that their infamy was tied to record sales, they posed for pictures holding guns and refused to state clearly whether they were gang members, drug dealers or just kids looking to make a quick buck. Meanwhile, in interviews, the group members were cagey. Playing upon stereotypes dating back to blackface minstrelsy, they tapped into a centuries-old American appetite for racialized entertainment. Over Dr Dre’s booming beats and sampled sounds of automatic gunfire, Ice Cube, MC Ren and Eazy-E rapped about their sexual prowess and penchant for violence. Taking a life or two, that’s what the hell I do / You don’t like how I’m living? Well, fuck you! Under the guidance of Eazy-E, NWA commodified a more sinister version of the Los Angeles story, crafting a new brand of hardcore rap that moved from third-person descriptions of street life to first-person portrayals of the gangstas themselves.Ĭompare earlier recordings like Eazy-E’s Boyz-n-the-Hood – which describes the arrest, trial and failed escape of a fictional drug dealer named Kilo-G – to NWA’s Gangsta Gangsta, in which Ice Cube actually assumes the role of an unrepentant criminal, proclaiming: Selling the hoodįor decades, real estate boosters have packaged the Southern California good life, using images of sunshine and palm trees to entice millions of Americans to relocate to the West Coast. The genius of the group’s approach – masterminded by member Eric “Eazy-E” Wright – was the way it manufactured a narrative of Compton as a rough, unpredictable place, while placing it at the center of NWA’s identity. And in a deeper sense, NWA’s brand of rap music was always a cinematic blend of reality and fiction: a blaxploitation film with beats.
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