For better and worse, not only did they set the stage for a transformative decade in Los Angeles, the 1992 riots included, but were the center of a crucial moment in pop music history. The album “Straight Outta Compton” and N.W.A’s post-Ice Cube tracks remain powerful, even if their homophobic and misongynist messages taint them. I started out by making my art for the underground and I still subscribe to that theory today.”ĭre’s continued success has proven the theory. “I didn’t get where I am by catering to mainstream tastes. “I could care less whether the pop people think my music is too crazy,” Dr. Once knee deep in funk on the dance floor, stun them with cussed messages about street life that burst out of the tracks like warriors on a rampage. N.W.A.’s classic approach: Hook ‘em with something they know, then shock ‘em with the new. Later Dre borrowed another Zapp idea, from “Dance Floor,” for the melody in 2Pac’s now-classic jam “California Love.” We watch Tupac Shakur and Dre in in the studio recording, a propellant loop helping to form a new work of art. Electro-funk drivers Roger Troutman and Zapp offer “More Bounce to the Ounce” as lowriders roll through Compton. wit Dre Day (And Everybody’s Celebratin’).” Cherrelle’s synth-funk classic “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” plays during another scene, an unspoken nod to how rap and pop were starting to intermingle at the time.ĭuring a shot of a high school parking lot, Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” booms from a car stereo, hinting at British synth pop’s influence. “Weak at the Knees” by Steve Arrington’s Hall of Fame foreshadows its use on N.W.A’s “Gangsta Gangsta.” P-Funk’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep” bumps through the movie, later to be quoted on Dr. Ren and DJ Yella), like Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production team in New York and others, employed classic party samples, familiar bass-lines and identifiable rhythm loops as Trojan horses of a sort. Seeking to document the here and now, the quintet (which also included M.C. The music in the movie offers a lesson in how that insurrection was fueled by the use of familiar grooves. Verbal reports from South Central Los Angeles that ditched the media middlemen, N.W.A’s early work traveled from the pressing plants to record stores and swap meets and into car stereos without any regard for then gatekeepers of commercial radio or MTV. We witness Ice Cube turning anger into rhymes. Dre’s beats improve as he masters the mixing board. The squirrelly-sounding Eazy-E overcomes laughter in front of the microphone, and soon he’s rolling through verses. Novices in the studio, the rappers risked ridicule in service of their mission.
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