mackdaddy-N.W.A
N.W.A the worlds most dangerouspaved a then unknown road in hardcore rap music. Eazy-E (Eric Wright) , former drug dealer turned record exclusive founded Ruthless records in 1986 as a way to get paid, plain and simple. Along whit the two producers of the World Class Wreckin� Cru-Dr.Dre (Andre Young) and DJ Yella (Antoine Carraby), a local MC named Ren (Lorenzo Patterson), and a tallented rapper /writer from the crew called CIA-Ice Cube (Oshea Jackson), the nucleus of N.W.A was formed. The deal wasn�t to make the regular danceable pop of the day that could easily garner airplay (although one of Dr.Dre�s first multiplatinum hits was for a girls trio called JJ Fad and their hit single "supersonic"), but to instead push the edge, to come out essentially-whit black punk rock records, that pushed the limmits of profanity, violence, and all that "normal" society, deemed as decent.
In 1988, N.W.A released "Straight Outta Compton" rap music�s recorded equivalent to A clockworkon annalog tape. The milkhad been traded in for the Olde English 40 Ounce, Beethoven for Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm band, and droogs for niggaz, but the nihilistic attitudes remained teh same. Eazy-E, Dr.Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella empowered themselves against a system that they felt brutalized em, talkin� the battles to the street. Dressed in black, executioner style, they did a drive-by an urban musical art form that, in their opinion, was scared to kick reality. Overa taut beat, testosteronepumping, Ice Cube laid down new ultra violent maxims for the rest of the rap industry.
"Straight Outta Compton, crazy muthaphucka named Ice Cube/from a gang called niggaz with attitudes/when im called off, I got a sawed off, squeeze the trigger, and booties are hauled off/you too boy if you fuck with me/off your ass/thats how I�m going out/for thethe punk muthaphuckas that�s showing out.... here�s a murder rap to keep you dancin�/whit a crime record like Charles Manson/AK-47 is the tool/don�t make me act like a muthaphuckn� fool....so when I�m in your naighborhood, you betta duck/caus iIce Cube is crazy as fusk...."
Not satisfied with just being gangstas, N.W.A allso took on an historically brutal LAPD with the incendiry "Fuck Tha Police", promising to smoke any corrupt police officer unlucky enough to cross their path. This was later proven to be prophetic with the Rodney King beating. Patting a bleak landscope of cold world hustlaz, bitches, crooked cops, and smoke out crack-fields, survival was the name of the game by any means necessary. Ice Cube speeks for an entire lost generation by countering his criticsrhetorially in "Gangsta Gangsta". It�s a breath-taking visual song, where the boys, on a metaphoric level, crusin� arround looking to break up parties, harass women, and get eny trouble that comes their way.
"Driinking 8-ball straight out the bottle. Do I look like a mutherfucking role model? Little kid looking up to me-life ain�t nothing but bitches and money."
Concervative critics ran for cover, Poice groups and the FBI�s office of puplic affaifs tried to have the music banned, but the american puplic loved N.W.A. Whitout the benefit of heavy radio, or video play, both "Straight Outta Compton" and Eazy-E�s "Eazy Duz It" , quickly went double platinum (2,000,000) in a matter of month. quite simply, the group changed the face of hip-hop. While many might accuse them for being responsible for half the violent sentiments and misogyny expressed in rap nowadays, they liberated the art form by showing that a black could express any viewpoint, even the goverment worked against it, and still reach the people in black and white comunities arround the world. If anything, songs like "Fuck The Police" and "Gangsta Gangsta" were the hardcore hiphop nation�s Declaration of independence and Bill Of Rights- it liberated the genre from the plastic, safe rap fo Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and young MC at a time when young black urban males didn�t have a voice that could express their anger and frustration with a system that clearly didn�t give a damn about them.
"What Jazzy Jeff and rappers like them talk about is phony, man." MC Ren expressed in a 1989 with the Los Angeles Times. "They�re not talking about what�s realy happening out there. They�re talking about what the white world and the white kids can indentify whit. If you�re a black kid from the street and somebody�s rappin� about parent�s don�t understanding (Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince�s grammy winning hit at the time was "Parents Just Don�t Understand") , you�d laugh at that. You might not have parents or you�d have parents that into crack and prustitution."
"Gangsta Gangsta", "If it ain�t ruff" and "express your self" changed the way westcoast rap sounded. Shifting the music away from the bass farting, fast paced electro beats that firstcharracterized the genre, Dr.Dre and DJ Yella slowed the pace down. They brought funk to the game, and made the musical landscape harder by some of the same rugged breakebeat�s their east coast counterparts were using. Long Island�s Puplic Enemy and De La Soul, also at theire most grounded-breaking in terms of pushing the musical limits of hip-hop music, made alot of the N.W.A stuff seem primitive, but the rugh attitudes and dynamite lyrics is what helped the Compton country. As Dr.Dre say to roling stone about Straight Outta Compton, still considered by many to be the most influential rap LP of all time:"To this day, I cant stand this album. I threw that thing together in 6 weeks so we could have something to sell out of the trunk."
When Ice Cube, the group�s primary vocalist and lyric-smith, broke away from the crew ower a financial dispute, many fans thought the group was done for. Cube traveled to New York�s Greene Street Studios to record AmeriKKKa�s Most Wanted whit Public Enemy�s Bomb Squad. The result was a hiphop master piece, an album that took N.W.A�s belligerent nigger concept to a higher level, while musicaly conquering almost everything the East Coast had ever produced. This garnered Ice Cube a huge East Coast following, giving him a coast to coast domaination that made him, for the time, the ki8ng of hip-hop.
Instead of bucking under the scrutiny and the pressure, N.W.A, with Dr.Dre�s persistence, went on to record the best albums of their career, the classic EP, 100 Miles And Runnin�, and the absolutely stellar Efil4zaggin.. Surprisingly, songs like "Just don�t bite it" and "One less bitch" were even more violent and misogynistic than anything the group had ever recorded, but the music had a clarity and an energy that was unparalleled. the smooth pop elegance of "Always into somethin�" garnered the group their second widespread radio hit, but expressed enough hard attitudes through the slick production and hard-edged lyrics that the fans didn�t see it as a sellout.
The gritty guitar driven vehemence of "Real Niggaz Dom�t Die", the relentless thump of "Real niggaz" and the marauding "100 Miles And Rinnin�" have undenible power it�s impossible to sit still while listening to them. Like any powerful rap song, the beats make the listener feel like he is a part of the world created by Dr.Dre�s super sonics-- it�s not unlike being jacked in someone else�s brain, and feeling the adrenaline rush of a bank robbery or mission gone bad, ala Ralph fiennes in katherine biglow�s pre-apocalyptic "Strange Days." No matter how ugly the sentiments expressed, or shocking the norms, it�s like witnessing a gruesome piece of cinematic violence by John Woo- you just can�t turn away. Maybe the late Eazy-E Summarized it best when he told the Los Angeles Times that "kids want to hear about the reality of their situations- not fairy tales. They don�t care if it�s ugly, the want reality."
Eight years after Straight Outta Compton changed music as we know it, everything has changed. Eazy-E sadly has died of AIDS, but not before he made Ruthless Records one of the most ground breaking and financially sucsesful independent labels of all time. Ice Cube not only has one of the most suscessful solo careers of all time, he�s also suscessful actor (Boys In The Hood, Higer Learning) and screenwriter (Friday).Dr.Dre is now is now widely regarded as one of the most important black music producers of all time, whit a musical ear and influence that some think could eventually rival that of Quincy Jones. Death Row Records, on the success of his albums, The Cronic and Doggystyle, made over 1 million dollers in a two-year perriode. MC Ren and Yella have also moved on to important careers, all thanks to the sucess of a few records engineered, like Dr.Dre quips, to sell out of the back of a trunk of the Compton Swap Meet.
Gangsta rap, desipte the fact that the genre has onten lost its ability to thrill, excite, terrify, and even facinate as it once did when N.W.A held the reins, lacks character. N.W.A�s Gratest Hits not only reminds old fans that the world�s most dangerous group did it first- they did it best. Music, as a means of expressing the most beautifull, ugly, and even violent sentiments ever know to man is better off for it. Cheo Hodari Coker is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times� calendar section.
Mackdaddy Home