Straight Outta Compton Revisited

The record changed everything for me in 1989. So how was the movie?

I finally got to see the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, which I mostly liked. I discovered the N.W.A. record of the same name in the summer of 1989, as a 20-year-old newspaper intern in New Orleans, and it was one of those records that changed everything. I’d never known music could do that. I immediately knew I’d be playing nothing else for weeks or months, and that I’d think about music and the world differently afterwards.

To be honest, Straight Outta Compton isn’t a great album – around the midpoint it starts to sag, expiring amid stylistic misfires and filler. But more than 25 years later (how did that happen?), those first three songs – “Straight Outta Compton,” “Fuck tha Police” and “Gangsta, Gangsta” – remain astonishing. Is there a stronger trio of songs that open an album in any genre?

The movie’s kind of the same way – after a really strong opening it loses its way a bit, getting muddled and meandering. But I thought it was wonderfully acted, and liked how it captured the dizzying, befuddling rush of what happened to these painfully young kids.

I also liked how it made room amid the soap-opera business quarrels and personal dust-ups for quieter, more subtle scenes.

My favorite scene comes after Ice Cube has left the group and answered N.W.A.’s diss tracks of him as a Benedict Arnold. His response is “No Vaseline,” a jaw-droppingly vicious track that destroyed what was left of N.W.A.

Before talking about that scene, let’s address “No Vaseline.”

I heard that song when it came out on the Death Certificate album in 1991, and winced at the homophobia and anti-Semitism. I also thought it was a masterpiece. Line after line scorches N.W.A., each missile delivered with the gleeful bounce of a sample from “Atomic Dog.” Ice Cube pretty much won the feud with the line “y’all motherfuckers moved straight outta Compton,” then stuck around for a victory lap with his jubilant chant of “I never have dinner with the President!” – a hilarious reference to a bizarre thing that really happened.

(A lot of people find “No Vaseline” irredeemably ugly, and I have no real counterargument. But try “My Summer Vacation” from the same album. KRS-One told aspiring rappers to listen to N.W.A. for the cinematic clarity with which their stories unfolded; on that track – about L.A. gangsters setting up shop selling crack in St. Louis – you’ll hear exactly what he’s talking about.)

Anyway, back to that scene. The remaining members of N.W.A. are listening to “No Vaseline” in stunned silence, while their manager gets increasingly angry and a couple of hangers-on giggle nervously. What makes it a great scene is they’re enraged but also grudgingly admire the track. After a particularly scabrous line, DJ Yella shakes his head and grins.

“That shit’s kinda funny,” he says as the others look at him in disbelief.

It’s a writer’s moment, making room amid the soap opera to see the members of N.W.A. as artists. They know what it’s like to struggle with beats and lyrics, and so have to admit that the track that’s going to destroy them is expertly crafted. That was far from the most obvious way to write and film that scene; kudos to the filmmakers for seeing a moment that could be rich and subtle.