By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON AUGUST. 18, 2015
Fuck tha police
Fuckin with me cuz I’m a teenager
Straight Outta Compton was an exciting biopic about an American gangsta rap, West Coast hip hop group called N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) and their rise to fame while surviving the police in Compton, California. The group was founded by Eazy-E and along with the DJ talents of Dr. Dre, N.W.A was born in 1986. Soon Ice Cube, DJ Yella and MC Ren would join the group and they would release their debut album Straight Outta Compton in 1988.
Comin straight from the underground
Young nigga got it bad cuz I’m brown
And not the other color so police
think
They have the authority to kill a
minority
Fuck that shit, cuz I ain’t tha one
For a punk muthafucka with a badge
and a gun
To be beatin on, and throwin in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle
of a cell
Fuckin with me cuz I’m a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin my car, lookin for the
product
Thinkin
every nigga is sellin narcotics.
‘Fuck Tha
Police’ - Ice Cube, N.W.A
Straight Outta Compton was an exciting biopic about an American gangsta rap, West Coast hip hop group called N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) and their rise to fame while surviving the police in Compton, California. The group was founded by Eazy-E and along with the DJ talents of Dr. Dre, N.W.A was born in 1986. Soon Ice Cube, DJ Yella and MC Ren would join the group and they would release their debut album Straight Outta Compton in 1988.
Compton,
California, certainly at the time when N.W.A came to be, was a crime ridden
city in southern Los Angeles County. Black and Hispanic Gangs like the Bloods and the Cribs ruled over the various neighborhoods as the Los Angeles
Police Department, often without cause, would randomly and violently harass and
arrest young black men. To be far, the
rule of law in these neighborhoods was out of control. Drugs and various other crimes were committed
by many of Compton’s residents.
The problem
here, which Straight Outta Compton dealt
brilliantly with was the racial profiling side of the violence of Compton. The LAPD seemed so out matched that their
officers patrolling the streets of Compton became cynical and ultimately
apathetic to the city’s residents. Many
young black men, who were not committing any crimes were often treated like criminals
by the police. This, quite
understandably, divided the people of Compton from the very police assigned to
their city to protect them from actual criminals.
The hypocrisy
of this dynamic was often present in this revealing film. These urban youth felt that they needed to
survive the gang ridden criminality and the police on a daily basis while
trying to go to school or even walk down the street on their way to the store. The attitudes that subsequently had to
develop were tough and that could appear to the police as ‘gangsta’ when all these
youths were trying to do was what was needed to survive and live another day.
There was a
scene early in the film when a school bus was pulled over by a couple of gang
members because teenagers in the bus were yelling out the window at them. Ice Cube was writing song lyrics when one of
these gang members pulled a gun and threatened them all, advising them to not
fuck with him. This was daily life in
Compton which N.W.A would later try to reveal to the world.
Most people
in the first world, along with this very writer, have really no idea what it must have
been like to live in a place where the ‘good-guys’ and the ‘bad-guys’ both existed
in gray areas, and where were both equal threats.
One’s ability to trust other people would be in turmoil. No wonder the youth would stick to tight
groups and fight for each other to the death if need be. ‘War-zone’ might be an exaggeration but to a
young person with no other environment to compare it to, this could easily feel
like soldiers in the trenches being abandon by the very people they were
brought up to believe would be there for them.
Straight Outta Compton was about a group of talented young black men that expressed themselves, through embellished lyrics and heavy
bass-driven thumps, conveying their desire not only to survive the trenches of
their neighborhoods but also the nationally little known hypocrisy that made up their
daily lives.
There’s also
this Stockholm Syndrome of Compton that is present in this film where these
young men love where they’re from. Their
identity is balled up in what they hate and what they love about where they’re from. They want Compton on the map, for it to be known
to the world but yet are consumed by its oppression, its instability, its
racism, and its violence. Psychologically
this must be forever damaging. These young
men and women were brought up in a place where shots were fired hourly and where
their protectors hate them for reasons neither side understand, but its home.
Home is a
funny place because in spite of its bad memories, its decay, it’s still home,
which is all we know, until we leave, if we do, and discover possibly better
parts of the world. For most people
though, home is still home, no matter what bad memories existed there. Home is where a person first connects to the
tribe and that connection is often a lifelong one for most.
N.W.A
expressed their love and their hate for their home in every song they
jackhammer their audience with. We shouldn’t
forget though that most of these boys were teenagers, singing about these
violent but ultimately expressive ideas.
Most of us were barely dealing with pimples and girls let alone dealing
with the idea of being actually shot at for whatever reason.
“FUCK THA
POLICE” I’m taking your black ass to jail.
N.W.A had a
problem with the police and ultimately authority which in the street, the
police represented. As much as we want
to apply the ‘law’ to the reasons as to why the police justified themselves, it’s
hard to think about liberalism and freedom of expression and find a problem
with what these artists were explicitly expressing themselves.
That said,
these young men were not without their faults.
They carried guns and threated the lives of other people, they stood up
to people and were willing to kill but yet didn’t. Some of these boys went to jail and some didn’t
but the ‘hood’ either way was breed in them all. They made a record that expressed their
ground, their plight, their war, which was received well in the community and across
the nation but not by everyone. Some
decided to steamroll over many of their albums.
Straight Outta Compton showed these boys gained fame but also dealt with White America and the problem with the reality of their lyrics. In Detroit they got arrested because they were ordered to not sing ‘Fuck Tha Police’ but they did anyway. The FBI investigated them because of their decent. This band was not popular among many groups, religious and minority, across the country.
What was really being rebelled against here? White America, as they believe today, oppressed black people for reasons, without logic, that most people in the states still can’t explain for fear of sounding publically racist. Black people are not equal, the problem is sadly our culture still perpetuates this. Why?
Why?
There isn’t
anything biologically that qualifies this line of thinking, so what is it? Tradition.
Our ancestors believed in something ludicrous, just as they did with
religion, and many to this day, stupid people, follow this line of
non-thinking. We do what our dad did and
avoid going beyond him, mind and spirit. Racist, simplistic thought are what the world
has in common and what it needs to get rid of (ideally).
Straight Outta Compton dealt with the Rodney King beating
and trial, which resulted in an acquittal for the police officers involved in
the beating. The LA riots occurred as
these young men from Compton revaluated their own reality. The question here is; what are they
doing? Are they causing problems in
society or are they waking it up, and are these two questions mutually elusive?
With
Ferguson and many other examples of police brutality against black people, to
this very day unfortunately, conveys a reality that N.W.A rapped about over two
decades ago. White America still can’t
equally accept black people into the American Dream. The reality is; is black people are seen as
black people and not people. As much as
this writer wished that this wasn’t the case, all one has to do is watch the
news. Objectively black people are
simply people with dark skin, which we all started from back in Kenya before
global migration happened.
Police
brutality has become this license to beat down minorities and ultimately fuel
the very cause as to why certain minority groups are not allowed to participate
in the white man’s version of the happiness.
Straight Outta Compton
represents these very minorities that artistically fought through the white man’s
dream to stamp their claim to freedom.
N.W.A ended
up going their separate ways after Ice Cube moved on and went solo. Eazy-E stuck with Dre for a bit before Dre went off and created Death Row. Eazy-E
got sick and was diagnosed with AIDS, he died in 1995.
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