Straight Outta...

Happy Friday!!!!  Congratulations, you made it!  Here's to a great weekend ahead of you!

So I went to see a movie this week.  Probably not a big deal for most folks.  But for me? It is. The last movie I saw was for the Tween's birthday back in January, and it was Night at the Museum (3?).  I like movies, I just don't go that often.  I have trouble sitting there that long.  I prefer to watch at home where I can take a break if I need to.  (Back in the day, watching Malcolm X and The Hurricane almost killed me!  I had to leave the theater several times during both of those movies.  But, I digress.)

So anyhoo, I keep a list (imagine that!) of movies that I want to see, whether at the theater or at home.  Among my action flicks (I can't wait to see Terminator, Mission Impossible, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Hitman 47), I was stoked about seeing Straight Outta Compton. Say what? Yep, you got it.  Here's why:

1) In addition to being a house head, I am also an early-80s to mid-90s rap head.  For a person who loves music as much as I do as well as loves the written word, I was intrigued by rap when I first heard it and the poetry style lyrics.  The first rap song I remember hearing was Grandmaster Flash's The Message.  I was in 6th or 7th grade (can't remember exactly now) and I remember all of us on the bus on the way to school singing it (as much as we could remember).  I kinda left rap for the most part in the mid-90s because things had changed and it was less about being a talented lyricist as it was about things I couldn't relate to anymore...

2) My favorite rap artists/groups from "back in the day" are:  Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, BDP, Heavy D, LL Cool J, MC Lyte (she's my sorority sister as well), Eric B & Rakim, Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick, A Tribe Called Qwest, De La Soul, Black Sheep, Public Enemy, MC Hammer (don't hate!), Salt N Pepa, Kool Moe Dee, Whodini, EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, Digital Underground, Biz Markie and of course, NWA and later Ice Cube & Dr. Dre when they went solo.  I liked some songs from the other groups/artists out there, but these are the ones that dominated high school, grammar school and college for me.

3) I remember the first time I heard an NWA song.  It was on a Friday night, my grandmother was at church and I had the radio blasting (as I did every Friday night that I didn't have to work) and it was around the time that they shifted house music to later in the evening and had rap hour or something like that.  I was already familiar with the New York rappers but then this song came on that sounded totally different from what I was used to hearing; it was NWA's "Dopeman."  I was like, "Whoa, that's new."  And so, using the best of the 80s technology and resources, I learned all I could about this group and their sound.  I learned that they were from California (who ever heard of rappers from California???) and they lived in the 'hood.  I was hooked. 

Now, I was not allowed to buy their music - who was?  But, I listened to it on the radio as it got more and more air play.  And when I went to college I was able to buy the music, but I digress again...

What I liked about rap music the most (back then anyway) is that it was music that told a story.  In a creative way.  Whether or not you agree with the lyrics or the language (and for the record, not all rappers cursed in their songs), you have to admit that they were some talented young people who wrote about the things that they saw and experienced every day. Whether you agree with how they expressed their experiences, you have to give it to them that they were indeed talented.

So onto NWA specifically.  I lived in the era of videos (do they even still make videos???) and when I went to college, videos were our primary entertainment and how we found out about new music as we didn't have any "urban" radio stations in my college town.  So I remember all of their videos as well.  Now, being a kid myself, I can honestly say that I didn't really understand how pivotal they were to the industry and all that at the time, I just know that I liked the music and understood where they were coming from.  And thus began my love affair with them.  

That being said, I was SICK when I found out that Ice Cube had left the group!  But, when his album dropped, I bought it.  And loved it.  The voice I had grown to love was still there. Can you tell he's my favorite?  Not saying that I didn't like the rest of them but his voice was and is amazing!  Kinda like my obsession with Chuck D's voice; there is nothing like it!!! 

Needless to say, I followed all of their careers as they matured beyond rap and into other pursuits (acting, directing, producing, beats!, etc.) as I aged along with them.  So when I heard about the movie, I was uber excited!!!

I purposely didn't read too much about the movie or get anyone's opinion before I saw it; I wanted to fully experience it.  And so on Monday, Urban Dude and I checked out a matinee of "Straight Outta Compton."  And I loved it!!!  

From the opening scenes, I was mesmerized (and I managed to make it through the entire 2 hours and 27 minutes without leaving out once).  It brought back so many memories of that time from 1986-1995 which for me was the time period from mid-high school until 3 years post-college.  Like it or not, the reality of the mid-80s was poverty, gangs and drugs.  I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a relatively decent neighborhood back then, but we were not immune to the effects of poverty, gangs and drugs.  While we never had the police issues that seemed to plague other communities in Chicago and across the country like Compton, we definitely experienced the shift that came with the influx of gangs and drugs. Who didn't have a "hype" in their neighborhood or their family?  (That would be a person hooked on crack).  And so I understood perfectly where they were coming from; it was a reality in Black America at the time.  As a now 40-something year old looking back at it all, in my opinion, they were in reality the antithesis of Public Enemy, who rapped about politics, society, poverty and drugs, from an East Coast standpoint.  Different methods, similar message.  So if you haven't seen it, keep an open mind and remember back to those days and what was going on at the time.  You will then appreciate how they captured it.

After watching the movie, I googled the group and each member individually to learn more about them.  And I learned a lot.  They were truly trailblazers for others looking to "make it" with a different sound.  Moreover, as you look at the members of the group, everyone had a persona within the group:  Eazy was the money man turned rapper, Dre & Yella were the men behind the music, Ren was a writer/rapper and Cube was the main writer/rapper.  In their neighborhood, they had a persona as well:  Eazy was a drug dealin' thug, Dre & Yella were dj's, Cube was being bussed to a better school in a different neighborhood, (not sure about Ren's neighborhood persona).  And at that time, their personas/roles, if I may say, is what identified them and kept them relatively safe in a volatile environment.  Because, as Jerry Heller said in his book, if you weren't a student, athlete, thug, drug dealer [or dj (in Dre's and Yella's case)], there was only one role left for you:  Victim.

I can relate to that, even though my neighborhood was nowhere near as bad as Compton, but we still had roles.  Even the girls.  There were the hype girls (crackheads), drug girls, fast girls, thug girls, quiet girls and school girls.  I was a school girl.  Which meant that I had safe passage and an escort if needed to make sure I got to and from school safely.  It also meant that no one bothered me or tried to pressure me to use drugs, drink, have sex or join a gang.  Because that was my role.  And if someone didn't know and would try to put me in a precarious situation, the folks in the hood would say, "Naw man, that's school girl. She's going to college, so leave her alone."  When I went to prom, the whole neighborhood came out.  When I left for college, the whole neighborhood came out.  Why?  Because they felt just as invested in my future as I did.  It was my role.  

Same for NWA (and in thousands of other neighborhoods across America) - they were kids with dreams of making it.  As they made it, their neighborhood was proud because some of their own "made good."  I can respect that (whether or not I personally agreed with each and every song they made, which I did not). Nor did I agree with everything they did and said outside of their music- that's not the subject of this post either.

I have to Additionally, all of the actors did an OUTSTANDING job of capturing the group's members personas.  Kudos to them all.  Ice Cube's son, O'Shea Jackson, Jr., looks just like his dad (a fairer skinned version) and sounds so much like him, it's creepy!  Also the other talented main character actors were awesome:  Corey Hawkins (Dr. Dre), Jason Mitchell (Eazy E), Neil Brown, Jr. (DJ Yella), Aldis Hodge (MC Ren), R. Marcos Taylor (Suge Knight), and Paul Giamatti (Jerry Heller).  

I predict that Straight Outta Compton will become a historical piece, for it is indeed a piece of history.  It doesn't depict America in its best light, but in a true light, nonetheless. Whether you are a rap fan or not, there is no question that NWA's "reality rap" was a true sign of the times.  And if you are a student of history as I am, you know that those who do not know their history are destined to repeat it.  

Speaking of which, can you really say that we are so far today from where we were in the mid-80s (police brutality against people of color, rampant poverty in neighborhoods of color, excessive gang violence/terrorism in neighborhoods of color, kids just looking for a way out)???  Look around people, I'm just sayin'...

What say ye?  Have you seen it? Do you think it effectively captured the backdrop of America at the time while simultaneously telling the story of the group?  Holla @ Darvi! Have a safe weekend and Be Blessed!