The biopic of the iconic gangster rap group NWA (Niggas With Attitude) premiered this week to much fanfare and success thanks to a great viral marketing campaign and a fond nostalgic look for early 90s rap music and Hip-Hop culture, though I am reluctant to consider anything NWA did socially in Hip-Hop a part of the culture. And after 20 years and the benefit of hindsight, theres only one conclusion one can draw from the impact of the group's existence:
A. NWA was never a real threat to the establishment at any point.
B. Any impact they had at all on Hip-Hop culture socially speaking was not very positive.
The closest they came to any backlash from the establishment was when they did the song "F--k Tha Police" in 1989 which law enforcement saw as disrespectful and the F.B.I. promptly fired off an angry letter to the record label. But once they determined that there wasn't going to be any real problems for cops then it was brushed off and back to the business of whooping black ass again (see Rodney King in 1991).
As of this writing, Straight Outta Compton the movie is on track to bring almost 60 million its opening weekend and while the success of the Black people involved is well and good as these are very talented individuals who have worked hard for what they have. The overwhelming positive reaction to this group and this film by the mainstream and the elation of that reaction by Black America is similar to how Django Unchained was received and that seems off to me somehow. There is something troubling in seeing how popular and entertaining (and lucrative) Black anger and frustration can be to everyone else. It kind of defeats the point doesn't it?
When NWA first came out over 20 years ago they said the songs about police brutality and ghetto life in South Central Los Angeles was akin to being the CNN of the streets. They were just being real and raw about what was happening around them and fuck you if you can't handle the truth. 20 years later and the reviews and word of mouth on their biopic is that there are quite a few glaring omissions and glossed over points of history. Integral members, most notably MC Ren, reduced to side players with little lines or input and high profile happenings like Dre assaulting tv show host Dee Barnes in public then pleading no contest in court completely skipped over. Where's the real and raw now?
For a group who was quick to say "we don't give a fuck!" they sure seem to give many fucks about their image and how they come off now. And I 'm not talking about men who matured from apathetic teenagers who rebelled for the sake of rebelling The Compton rap group in the beginning had this veneer of radicals, something in the vein of east coast's Public Enemy. Exhibiting so much anger and frustration and the willingness to tell it like it is coupled with a direct response from the Feds solidified this notion.
All of that quickly devolved with the album Efil4zaggin (niggaz4life) plus a bunch of in-fighting fueled by contract disputes and the radicals never did get back on track. If that track was supposed to be some political/social agenda in the first place.
People take pride in Ice Cube and Dr. Dre's success but doesn't it seem a strange that the guys who were at the fore front of a big middle finger to mainstream America are now thoroughly embraced by mainstream America?
There was a particular review of the film that I found interesting from The New Yorker and the last part of the review is what got my attention:
The group’s music makes for good business because it’s more than enjoyable for its audience; it’s essential news. In delivering what the musicians consider a journalistic report on life in Compton—with, as its defining aspect, the relentless threat of police violence—they render themselves not merely popular but indispensable, now as then. “Straight Outta Compton” is also—appallingly and infuriatingly—straight out of 2015. The sense of siege in the face of the authorities that N.W.A. reported on in the nineteen-eighties is unrelieved today. The difference now is the sense of nationwide urgency that goes with it.
The deal with which the movie concludes is Dr. Dre’s sale of Beats to Apple for three billion dollars, and there’s no irony in that conclusion. Within the vigorous entertainment of “Straight Outta Compton” is a sharp-minded realism about the machines within the machines, the amplifiers of money and media that, behind the scenes and offscreen, play crucial roles in the flow of power. Whatever old-school rap-style boasting is implied in the inclusion of Dr. Dre’s grand financial coup, it’s also a challenge: one of the authors of “Fuck tha Police” is now armed with an awful lot of money.
That last sentence hints at the veneer of radicalism that I was talking about. If the writer of that article thinks the establishment unwittingly gave a revolutionary three billion dollars then he is sorely mistaken. Andre Young is far from that. In fact he now has three billion reasons to not challenge the establishment. The same goes for O'shea Jackson as well.
Does any else find it funny that Ice Cube, a man whose resting face is a perpetual scowl, whose early written lyrics are:
Ice Cube will swarm
On any motherfucker in a blue uniform
Just cause I'm from the CPT
Punk police are afraid of me, huh
A young nigga on the warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dying in L.A
Yo Dre, I got something to say
After twenty years hasn't changed that persona, just the background. When Cube was a young black man in his early 20s living in the hood surrounded by crime, violence and racist police, his anger and frustration was palpable and justified. As a man approaching middle age those issues are still very prominent today but he now lives in the suburbs and does movies where he is surrounded by moronic characters portrayed by Mike Epps, Kevin Hart, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill and his anger and frustration is funny and light-hearted. Same scowl, same steely eyes glare only this time its comical. Some may see that as maturing, I see it and question was it ever real in the first place?
But where Ice Cube at least attempted to crouch his rage in some sort of social context at least initially, Eazy E and Dr. Dre didn't bother with the pretext at all, choosing to dive wholeheartedly into the sex, drugs, gangbanger and bitches lifestyle. Thats when they weren't snapping on each other incessantly and when you look back at their time fully half of Cube, Dre, Eazy E's career and NWA's existence was spent on them fighting amongst themselves publicly and privately but mostly publicly.
It's interesting to see just how rose colored the glasses of nostalgia really are because while we're all celebrating NWA and their impact on Hip-Hop what we're missing is that fact that NWA was a major factor who ushered in what I call the Dark Ages of Hip-Hop, the effects of which are still felt today. By the late 80s the Golden Age of Hip-Hop was in full swing and the socio/political conscious movement was leading the charge of a neo Black Power era the likes of which hadn't been seen since the original movement of the late 60s, early 70s. Led by individuals and groups like KRS-ONE, Poor Righteous Teachers, X-Clan and Public Enemy, the diversity of styles, voices and sub-genres was the largest its ever been so far in the culture and music.
And then came Niggas With Attitude.
NWA arguably put West Coast rap music on the Hip-Hop radar, while there were already numerous Hardcore rappers and rap groups they were mainly on the east coast. Thanks to a rise in the profile and awareness of west coast gang culture spotlighted by the film Colors, Eazy E and his crew were able to marry rage over social injustice with a gangbanger sensibility in a way that I don't think anyone ever saw before. But what impact did that have on Hip-Hop as a culture? It killed the political movement. There was less joy in the music as everything had to have a harder edge. Years ago I remember someone recalling it as "when the wheels of NWA crushed the daisies of De La Soul is the day diversity in rap died."
The shadow of that change fell over everything in the culture and music and it spawned new artists who embraced the harshness (Snoop Dogg, Oxny for example) and in order to try to stay relevant many established artists took on a darker edge. Hell MC Hammer went from Can't Touch This, Pray and 2 Legit to Quit to the Funky Headhunter and a faux gangster pose. Even female rapper's like MC Lyte scored a grammy nomination with a gruff song about how she needed "Ruffnecks". In the early to mid 90s things got dark and I mean REALLY dark in rap music and Hip-Hop culture culminating to the most infamous moments in the history of the music, the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G within six months of each other. And its no coincidence that you can do a six degrees of separation between them and NWA. And looking back at the beef between those two rappers, who it involved, how it escalated and played out it was just the next logical step from how NWA acted just three or four years earlier.
There was a sense of bad things getting more amped up year by year from 1990 on. There were too many personality clashes, too many egos, too much money, too much immaturity, too much testosterone, too many threats and way too many guns, it was only a matter of time before someone got killed. And once the two biggest names in rap music were murdered (both publicly and gang related) the trend didn't stop and hasn't stopped.
