Straight Outta Compton
Straight Outta Compton is the debut studio album by the rap group N.W.A, and recorded in Los Angeles county's City of Compton. Released on August 8, 1988, by Ruthless Records, the album was produced by N.W.A's Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, with lyrics written by N.W.A's Ice Cube and MC Ren, along with fellow rapper The D.O.C. Not merely depicting Compton's street violence, the lyrics repeatedly threaten to instead lead it by attacking peers and even police, men as well as women. The track "Fuck tha Police" drew an FBI agent's warning letter, which aided N.W.A's notoriety, the group calling itself "the world's most dangerous group".
Despite scarce radio play beyond the Los Angeles area, the album delivered gangsta rap's first platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America, with one million copies sold by July 1989. That year, the album peaked at #9 on Billboards Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and at #37 on the popular albums chart, the Billboard 200. Enjoying the media spotlight, N.W.A's example triggered the rap genre's movement toward hardcore, gangsta rap. As the 1990s closed, if largely through N.W.A's own splintering—yielding successful solo music careers and franchises for Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, whose 1991 departure dissolved the group—their ripple effects had reshaped rap, R&B, and pop music, influencing pop culture.
Remastered, the album's September 2002 reissue gained four bonus tracks. The next year, Rolling Stone ranked this album 144th on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list—fifth among rap albums— holding the spot again on the list's 2012 update. Nearing the album's 20th anniversary, another extended version of it arrived in December 2007. And in 2015, after an album reissue on limited edition red cassettes, alongside the release of the biopic film Straight Outta Compton reinvigorated album sales, which by year's end reached 3x Platinum. In 2016, it became the first rap album inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The next year, the Library of Congress enshrined Straight Outta Compton in the National Recording Registry.
Background
For most of the 1980s, New York City, hip hop's 1973 birthplace, remained the rap genre's dominant scene. The rap scene then secondary was Los Angeles county's. Until 1988, this scene, retaining more of hip hop's dance and party origin, prioritized the DJ, from a DJ crew, playing, at a dance party, electro rap and "funk hop"—an influence of Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force offering, from New York, the 1982 hit "Planet Rock"—whereas the East Coast, as in Run-DMC's breakout album of 1984, had moved to prioritizing the lyricist, the "MC."Yet in L A, DJs increasingly imparted or invited lyrics atop the party music, how the World Class Wreckin' Cru core—including Dr. Dre and DJ Yella, led by Grandmaster Lonzo—made L A's first rap album under a major record label. Since 1982, among L A's rising lyricists was Ice-T, who heard Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D's 1985 single "P.S.K. What Does It Mean?" In 1986, thus influenced, Ice-T offered the B side "6 'n the Morning," which, stealing some of L A's attention from electro rap, reached gold sales as the inaugural anthem of a new rap subgenre later called "gangsta rap."
In 1986, Eric Wright, a Kelly Park Compton Crip, was forming in Compton an independent label, Ruthless Records. Dealing drugs, Wright had become acquainted with Dr. Dre and Arabian Prince, two friends, record producers, and recording artists hitting locally but denied royalties. Upon recruiting from rap group C.I.A. a ghostwriter in Ice Cube, who was from South Central Los Angeles, Wright had Dre and Cube craft a song, "Boyz-n-the-Hood." But once a Ruthless group signed from New York City rejected it, Wright, dubbed Eazy-E, himself rapped it, a local hit. It sounded similar to Schooly D's "P.S.K." single, and its tempo was too slow to dance to.
Exceeding Ice-T's model, N.W.A imparted to gangsta rap the N.W.A signature, "exaggerated descriptions of street life, militant resistance to authority, and outright sexist violence." Locally, by supplying radio edits, N.W.A enjoyed nearly direct radio access, anyway, via Greg Mack of KDAY radio. But otherwise, even N.W.A's national debut, Straight Outta Compton, saw virtually no radio play, a fact that amplified the album's feat: the first gangsta rap to hit platinum sales, 1 million copies. As rap fans, even from afar, sought more from Compton and South Central, local rappers, like MC Eiht of Compton's Most Wanted, rose to the call. LA's rap scene rapidly moved from party rap to hardcore rap.
Yet on the global stage, N.W.A towered as gangsta rap's icons. For their ostentatious lyrics, profane and strident, unrelentingly depicting violent defiance, even threatening law enforcement, an FBI agent sent the record label a warning letter, MTV banned the "Straight Outta Compton" video, some venues banned N.W.A performance, and some police officers refused to work security at N.W.A shows elsewhere. As this all sparked publicity that reinforced their aura, the rappers would allude to such facts in later raps. In any case, Slant magazine recalls "Straight Outta Compton as the sound of the West Coast firing on New York's Fort Sumpter in what would become '90s culture's biggest Uncivil War."
Record production
Talking of Straight Outta Compton, N.W.A's prime record producer, Dr. Dre, in a 1993 interview, recalls, "I threw that thing together in six weeks so we could have something to sell out of the trunk." N.W.A's Greatest Hits, released in July 1996, would include six tracks from the 1988 album: "Gangsta Gangsta," "If It Ain't Ruff," "I Ain't tha 1," "Express Yourself," a "Straight Outta Compton" extended mix, and "Fuck tha Police," which is absent from Straight Outta ComptonSynthesis
The album's producers were Dr. Dre with DJ Yella and Arabian Prince. Considering the album's force, its production may seem surprisingly spare, mostly sampled horn blasts, some funk guitar riffs, sampled vocals, and turntable scratches atop a drum machine. Their drum machine, synthesizing kick drums, was the Roland TR-808, immediately obsoleted, upon its 1980 release, by the Linn LM-1, but costing about $1 000 versus $5 000. Used as early as 1980 by Japanese electropop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, it became hip hop's venerated "808." Its deep bass thumps, audibly artificial, lend the now classic sound of rap's 1980s and 1990s landmarks, including Straight Outta ComptonVocals
N.W.A's Ice Cube and MC Ren along with Ruthless Records rapper The D.O.C. wrote the lyrics, including those rapped by Eazy-E and Dr. Dre. On the other hand, DJ Yella never raps, and Arabian prince does only minor vocals on "Something 2 Dance 2." Otherwise, each group member stands out through a solo rap, too.MC Ren has two solo tracks, "If It Ain't Ruff" and "Quiet on tha Set." Dr. Dre dominates "Express Yourself." Ice Cube's is "I Ain't tha 1." Eazy-E's is "8 Ball," remix of the track on N.W.A's 1987 album N.W.A. and the Posse. The one guest is The D.O.C., in the intro of "Parental Discretion Iz Advised."
Whereas Ren wrote his own lyrics, and The D.O.C. wrote some lyrics, perhaps mainly Dre's, Cube wrote some of Dre's and nearly all of Eazy's. Still, even Eazy and Dre, alike Cube and Ren, bring a distinct delivery and character, making N.W.A stand out from imitators.
Content
Reflecting in 2002, a Rolling Stone writer calls the album a "bombastic, cacophonous car ride through Los Angeles' burnt-out and ignored hoods." In a contemporary review, rather, Mark Holmberg, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, calls it "a preacher-provoking, mother-maddening, reality-stinks" album that "wallows in gangs, doping, drive-by shootings, brutal sexism, cop slamming and racism." "Hinting at gang roots, and selling themselves on those hints," writes Newsweek staff, "they project a gangster mystique that pays no attention to where criminality begins and marketing lets off." Even when depicting severe and unprovoked violence, the rappers cite their own stage names as its very perpetrators. By their sheer force, the album's opening three tracks—"Straight Outta Compton," "Fuck tha Police," and "Gangsta Gangsta"—signature songs setting N.W.A's platform, says an AllMusic writer, "threaten to dwarf everything that follows."First, the title track, smearing and menacing civilians and police, men and women, while women receive gruff sexual advances, too, even threatens to "smother your mother." Then, after a skit of the police put on criminal trial, "Fuck tha Police," alleging chronic harassment and brutality by officers, singularly threatens lethal retaliation. "Gangsta Gangsta" depicts group outings to carouse with women while slurring unwilling women and assaulting men, whether confrontational troublemakers, innocent bystanders, or a driver who, fleeing the failed carjacking, gets shot at. "8 Ball" is dedicated to the 40 oz bottles of malt liquor, Olde English 800. "Express Yourself," written by Cube and rapped by Dre, incidentally scorns weed smoking—already proclaimed by Cube in "Gangsta Gangsta" as his own, chronic practice—which allegedly causes brain damage, a threat to the song's optimistic agenda, liberal individuality. "I Ain't tha 1" scorns spending money on women. "Dopeman" depicts the crack epidemic's aftermath. Closing the album, "Something 2 Dance 2" is upbeat.
The term gangsta rap, soon to arise in journalism, had not been coined yet. The rappers themselves called it, recalls Ice Cube, "reality rap." Indicting N.W.A as its leading example, journalist David Mills, in 1990, acknowledges, "The hard-core street rappers defend their violent lyrics as a reflection of 'reality.' But for all the gunshots they mix into their music," Mills counters, "rappers rarely try to dramatize that reality" empathetically. "It's easier for them to imagine themselves pulling the trigger." Still, the year before, Bud Norman, reviewing in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, feels that on Straight Outta Compton, "they don't make it sound like much fun." In Norman's view, "They describe it with the same nonjudgmental resignation that a Kansan"—a resident of Kansas—"might use about a tornado." Still, "Straight Outta Compton
Critical reception
Musical opinions and social commentaries on Straight Outta Compton would be mixed. And after staking N.W.A's territory in its opening three tracks—"Straight Outta Compton," "Fuck tha Police," and "Gangsta Gangsta"—the album, by its end, includes several lackluster tracks. Still, these cannot impair the sum force of the album. Appearing on numerous rankings of top albums, it is among the rap genre's "most crucial albums," an "essential landmark."Critiques
Music journalist Greg Kot finds N.W.A.'s sounds "fuller and funkier" than Public Enemy's, and the lyrics just as "unforgiving." On the other hand, Cary Darling, in California's Orange County Register, while thinking that the lyrics make Ice-T "look like a Cub Scout," ultimately deems the album "curiously uninvolving," as it "lacks the insight and passion that put the best work by the likes of Boogie Down Productions, Ice-T and Public Enemy so far ahead of the field." In the Hi-Fi News & Record Review, Peter Clarke, going further, calls the lyrics "unrelenting in their unpleasantness." Offering the lowest possible rating, Clark adds, "The cumulative effect is like listening to an endless fight next door. The music on this record is without a hint of dynamics or melody."Charlie Dick, rating the album two stars for Q magazine, contends, "In the wake of Public Enemy and KRS-One, it is amazing that something this lightweight could cause such a stir. The all-mouth-and-trousers content is backed up by likable drum machine twittering, minimal instrumentation and duffish production." Still, he anticipates, "This regressive nonsense will be passed off as social commentary by thrill-seekers all across the free world." By 1991, while criticizing group members for allegedly carrying misogynist lyrics into real life, Newsweek staff incidentally comments that this album, nonetheless, "introduced some of the most grotesquely exciting music ever made." And reviewing in retrospect, Steve Huey, in AllMusic, deems the album mainly just "raising hell" while posturing, but finds that "it still sounds refreshingly uncalculated because of its irreverent, gonzo sense of humor, still unfortunately rare in hardcore rap."
Rankings
In 1994, British magazine Hip Hop Connection, placing the album third among rap's best albums, adds, "Straight Outta Compton sounded so exciting, insignificant details such as realism and integrity could be overlooked." The Source magazine placed the album 63rd among the 100 Best Rap Albums. Television network VH1, in 2003, placed it 62nd. Spin magazine, sorting the "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005," identified it 10th.The first rap album ever to gain from Rolling Stone five stars at initial review, it placed 144th among the magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. And Time, in 2008, named it one of the 100 greatest albums of all time. Vibe appraised it as one of the 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century. In 2012, Slant lists it 18th among the "Best Albums of the 1980s." In any case, in November 2016, Straight Outta Compton became the first rap album inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Charting & sales
N.W.A's album best selling, Straight Outta Compton, released in August 1988, attained gold certification, half a million copies sold, on April 13, 1989. Meanwhile, the album peaked at number #9 on Billboards Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and on April 15, 1989, at #37 on the Billboard 200, which ranks the week's most popular albums. On July 18, 1989, the album was certified platinum, one million copies sold.By contrast, N.W.A's unauthorized debut but compilation album, N.W.A and the Posse, out since November 1987, would reach gold certification in September 1994. And the group's 100 Miles and Runnin' EP, a format shorter than album, released in August 1990, taking two years, would go platinum in September 1992. That year, on March 27, Straight Outta Compton had been certified double-platinum, two million copies sold.
By Priority Records' estimation, about 80% of Straight Outta Compton
Approaching the August 2015 release of the film Straight Outta Compton, the album reentered the Billboard 200 at number #173. The next next week, it rose to #97, another week later reached #30—beyond its 1989 peak position of #37—and on September 5 peaked at #6. Meanwhile, the album's title track, entering the popular songs chart, the Billboard Hot 100, becoming N.W.A's first song in the Top 40, spent two weeks at #38.
Media presence
In 2004, the DigitaArts list 25 Best Albums Covers included Straight Outta Compton. By the album's release, Arabian Prince, on the cover, had left N.W.A. Lacking him, an iconic group photo taken by Ithaka Darin Pappas on November 11, 1988, at Pappa's studio apartment in Los Angeles' Miracle Mile district, has been recurrently republished in media, including The Source"It's definitely the best rap record I've ever heard," singer Sinéad O'Connor, then herself controversial, appraises in 1990. But, feeling that he had rushed its production, N.W.A's own Dr. Dre, in a 1993 interview, remarked, "To this day, I can’t stand that album." On the other hand, in 2005, comedian Chris Rock still ranked it the top rap album of all time. And the next year, parodic music artist "Weird Al" Yankovic released a new album, Straight Outta Lynwood. Punk rock band NOFX released the 2009 song "Straight Outta Massachusetts." In the 2014 film 22 Jump Street, the character Mrs. Dickson, whose husband is played by Ice Cube, says she's "straight outta Compton." And in 2015, the biopic Straight Outta Compton was a hit film.
Track listing
- Altogether, all songs were produced by Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince.
| No. | Title | Writer | Performer | Samples | Length |
| 1 | "Straight Outta Compton" |
| 4:18 | ||
| 2 | "Fuck tha Police" | 5:45 | |||
| 3 | "Gangsta Gangsta" | 5:36 | |||
| 4 | "If It Ain't Ruff" | 3:34 | |||
| 5 | "Parental Discretion Iz Advised" | 5:15 | |||
| 6 | "8 Ball " | 4:52 | |||
| 7 | "Something Like That" | 3:35 | |||
| 8 | "Express Yourself" | 4:25 | |||
| 9 | "Compton's N the House " | 5:20 | |||
| 10 | "I Ain't tha 1" | 4:54 | |||
| 11 | "Dopeman " | 5:20 | |||
| 12 | "Quiet On tha Set" | 3:59 | |||
| 13 | "Something 2 Dance 2" | 3:23 |