It was the perfect backdrop for Ice Cube, Eazy-E and MC Ren’s barrage of anti-police rhetoric, threats of gun violence and invective against scheming women. Dre and Yella looped up an array of funk samples over the Winstons’ legendary Amen break, coming away with a beat that’s both hooky and uncompromisingly hard. “Straight Outta Compton’s” opening title track was gangsta rap’s shot heard round the world. On this 25th anniversary of “Straight Outta Compton” (August 8, 1988), we take a trip back through the volatile gangsta rap classic that launched the careers of Dr. There were many more afterward, but few rode the axis between the political and the profane, between senseless brutality and pointed outrage, between street grit and pop pleasantry, as well as N.W.A did with “Straight Outta Compton.” And none of their successors would be here if Dre and company hadn’t kicked the door down first. There were many gangsta rap groups before N.W.A Boogie Down Productions, Ice-T and Schoolly D were all early adopters, but they lacked a certain severity of image and the support of “Yo! MTV Raps” to broadcast it to the suburbs. Its significance as West Coast hip-hop and gangsta rap’s breakthrough album cannot be understated. “Straight Outta Compton” was certified platinum almost a year after its release - no small feat for a group possessed of such deliberately brutal iconography in an era when controversial hip-hop was met with corporeal political and community backlash. If you listen carefully you can hear the sedate, ornate funk sound of Dre’s legendary early 90s run snapping into place on tracks like “I Ain’t tha 1” and “Gangsta Gangsta.” Dre and Yella coated these songs in a blanket of hooky sample loops lifted off the funk and soul music of their parents, but flayed and layered in a manner not unlike the dense sound collages of Public Enemy classics like “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” and the Beastie Boys’ and Dust Brothers’ epic “Paul’s Boutique.” As Dre’s ease with sampling increased, he began to move from abrasive hard funk and gritty boom bap into smoother territories. If “Straight Outta Compton’s” stories were stark, the production provided listeners some solace. Dre, ‘The Chronic’ at 20: Classic Track-By-Track Review They were documentarians, shining much needed light on the plight of a class of increasingly disgruntled and disenfranchised Americans.ĭr. The lyrical content was crass and uncompromising, but as the group would find itself constantly explaining in interviews, that’s because the community that spawned the group wasn’t doing so well. Dre on vocals and Dre and DJ Yella on production, and the fruit of their efforts was 1989’s “Straight Outta Compton.” The album bore traces of the playful gallows humor of early incarnations of the group, but the new material vividly matched faces and sounds to the heretofore-untold struggles of inner city youth during the crack epidemic. N.W.A ( Ni–az Wit Attitudes) spent the remainder of 1987 and parts of 1988 recording with just Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Dr.
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