Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton is the debut studio album by American hip-hop group N.W.A, released on January 25, 1989, through Priority and Ruthless Records. It was produced by N.W.A members Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, with lyrics written by Eazy-E, Ice Cube and MC Ren, alongside contributions from Ruthless rapper and N.W.A affiliate the D.O.C. The album's lyrics depict the conditions of life in Compton, California, while also expressing hostility toward rival groups and law enforcement. The song "Fuck tha Police" prompted a warning letter from an FBI agent, which contributed to N.W.A's notoriety and the group's self-description as "the world's most dangerous group."

In July 1989, despite receiving limited radio airplay outside of the Los Angeles area, It attracted extensive media attention and is widely credited with accelerating the rise of hardcore gangsta rap in mainstream hip-hop. Although initial critical reception was mixed, the album has since been recognized as one of the most influential and acclaimed works in hip-hop history.

The album was reissued in September 2002 with four bonus tracks, and again in December 2007—shortly before its 20th anniversary—with several "tribute remixes" and a live recording of "Compton's n the House." In 2015, a red cassette reissue and the release of the biographical film Straight Outta Compton led to renewed commercial success, with the album later certified triple platinum.

Background

During most of the 1980s, New York City—the birthplace of hip-hop—remained the genre's primary creative and commercial center, while Los Angeles County played a secondary role. Up until 1988, the Los Angeles hip-hop scene largely reflected hip-hop's dance-oriented and party-based origins, emphasizing DJs and DJ crews as its central figures. The dominant local style was electro rap or “funk hop,” influenced by tracks such as the New York-based 1982 hit "Planet Rock". Ice-T's song shifted attention in Los Angeles away from electro rap, achieved gold sales, and is widely considered an early example of "gangsta rap". Wright enlisted South Central rapper Ice Cube—then a member of the group C.I.A.—as a ghostwriter and tasked him with writing material for the new label alongside Dr. Dre. The collaboration produced the track "Boyz-n-the-Hood". Originally intended for a New York group signed to Ruthless Records, the song was instead recorded by Wright himself under the name Eazy-E after the original performers declined it. The group attempted to broaden its audience by providing radio edits to local stations such as KDAY, As interest in the Los Angeles rap scene grew, marking a broader regional shift from dance-oriented to hardcore rap styles. These controversies reinforced N.W.A's anti-establishment image, which the members would later emphasize in subsequent recordings.

According to Slant Magazine, Straight Outta Compton played a pivotal role in shaping the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry, with the publication describing the album as "the West Coast firing on New York’s Fort Sumter in what would become '90s culture's biggest Uncivil War." Initially, still spending weekends in jail over traffic violations, Dre was reluctant to do "Fuck tha Police", a reluctance that dissolved once that sentence concluded.

Vocals

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 by Dr. Dre. Arabian Prince's only rapping contribution on Straight Outta Compton is the closing track "Something 2 Dance 2". "Parental Discretion Iz Advised" features vocals by The D.O.C., making him the only non-official member of N.W.A to rap on the album. Newsweek wrote, "Hinting at gang roots, and selling themselves on those hints, 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 AllMusic album reviewer Steve Huey, "threaten to dwarf everything that follows". 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 high-octane electro outro track. Still, the year before, Bud Norman, reviewing in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, assesses 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 might use about a tornado." the latter of which had not appeared on the Billboard charts until the summer of 1988.

In the United Kingdom, Straight Outta Compton was released by 4th & B'way Records after a period that Roy Wilkinson of Sounds described as "months" of selling well as an import release.

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Music journalist Greg Kot, reviewing Straight Outta Compton for the Chicago Tribune, finds N.W.A's sound "fuller and funkier" than that of East Coast hip-hop, and their lyrics just as "unforgiving" as those of East Coast group Public Enemy. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice perceives N.W.A's persona as calculated: "Right, it's not about salary—it's about royalties, about brandishing scarewords like 'street' and 'crazy' and 'fuck' and 'reality' until suckers black and white cough up the cash." 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."

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By 1991, while criticizing group members for allegedly carrying misogynist lyrics into real life, Newsweek incidentally comments that Straight Outta Compton, nonetheless, "introduced some of the most grotesquely exciting music ever made". Hip-hop magazine The Source included Straight Outta Compton in its 1998 "100 Best Albums" list. 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 five stars from Rolling Stone at initial review, it placed 70th among the magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in its 2020 revised list. Time, in 2006, 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 Magazine listed it 18th among the "Best Albums of the 1980s". In November 2016, Straight Outta Compton became the first rap album inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2017, Straight Outta Compton was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, who deemed it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Meanwhile, the album peaked at number 9 on Billboards Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and on April 15, 1989, at number 37 on the Billboard 200, which ranks the week's most popular albums. On July 18, 1989, the album was certified platinum with one million copies sold.

Approaching the August 2015 release of the film Straight Outta Compton, the album reentered the Billboard 200 at number 173. The next week, it rose to number 97, and another week later it reached number 30 Meanwhile, the album's title track entered the Billboard Hot 100 as N.W.A's first song in the Top 40, and spent two weeks at number 38.

Media presence

In 2004, the DigitaArts list 25 Best Albums Covers included Straight Outta Compton. By the album's release, Arabian Prince, seen on the cover, had left N.W.A. Prior to his final departure in January 1989, he had intermittently skipped studio sessions and photoshoots, one of which was a group photo taken by Ithaka Darin Pappas on November 11, 1988, at Pappa's studio apartment in Los Angeles' Miracle Mile district. The photo has been repeatedly republished in media. Pappas calls it "The Miracle Mile Shot", It has been seen on The Source May 1989 cover, the DVD cover of the 2015 documentary Kings Of Compton, in France's Musée d'art contemporain de Marseille from 2017 to 2018, and as a backdrop at N.W.A's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2016 in Brooklyn, New York.

Sinéad O'Connor, then herself controversial, appraised in 1990 that "It's definitely the best rap record I've ever heard." 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. I threw that thing together in six weeks so we could have something to sell out of the trunk." Additionally, he said, "Back then, I thought the choruses were supposed to just be me scratching." and AllMusic.

!Peak<br />position

! scope="row"| US Billboard Top LPs

| 37

! scope="row"| US Billboard Top Soul LPs

| 9

!Chart (1991)

!Peak<br />position

! scope="row"| Australian Albums (ARIA)

| 51

!Chart (2003)

!Peak<br />position

! scope="row"| Australian Albums (ARIA)

| 8

! scope="row"| Italian Vinyl Records (FIMI)

| 15

! scope="row"| US Billboard 200

| 4

Certifications

Notes

External links

Straight Outta Compton (Adobe Flash) at Radio3Net (streamed copy where licensed)
Straight Outta Compton at Discogs
"Outlaw Rock: More Skirmishes on the Censorship Front" — The New York Times
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160619132711/http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol8is2/armstrong.html]

Straight Outta Compton

Background

Vocals

Media presence

Certifications

See also

Notes

Further reading

External links