Straight Outta Compton Leaves Assault on Female Journo Straight Outta the Movie
After a long and winding road to the big screen, the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton hit it big this weekend, racking up an estimated $56 million in ticket sales and creating an online buzz that even the White House couldn’t resist (although they should have). The film traces the rise and dissolution of the highly influential rap crew N.W.A, and while its success seems to be a surprise to the media, it shouldn’t be.
The film is directed by F. Gary Gray, a prominent black director with an eye for commercial success, and aside from the built-in audience for a film about the pioneering rap superstars, its release comes at an auspicious cultural moment. Just as N.W.A made an unlikely crossover with white audiences 25 years ago, the police brutality they rapped about has finally crossed over to white audiences, thanks to the video proof that is now available for all to see. It’s ironic that so many of the people now shocked by the videos that have fueled the #BlackLivesMatter movement have been rapping along to those same stories since they were kids.
Their place in music history is undeniable, as is their virtuosity. To be frank, rap music in the mid-to-late 80s wasn’t about shit, because everybody was trying to catch crossover lightning in a bottle, and there were only a few available strategies to do that. Socially conscious rap wasn’t one of them, unless you could get Aerosmith to back you up, or somehow fit your message into a “Roxanne, Roxanne” answer record. Then along came overtly political and hard-as-nails Public Enemy, who put black political consciousness back on the charts, and N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes), whose innovation was to make living black life a political protest in and of itself. In a way, they were the Edward Snowden of black life, except people completely ignored their whistleblowing while, as MC Ren put it, “their whole f**kin’ family is wearing our t-shirt.”
But as with many music superstars, their legacy is a complicated one, and Straight Outta Compton has drawn criticism for key omissions, including…READ MORE
Copyright 2015 Liberaland
By: Tommy Christopher
Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
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Suzanne McFly August 18th, 2015 at 10:28
I seen the movie yesterday and I thought it was one of the best movies I have seen in awhile. I grew up listening to NWA, Wu Tang, Public Enemy, Mob Deep…but I also listened to Salt & Pepa’ and Queen Latifah. I remember the beating of Dee Dee Barnes but this story focused on NWA and their break up then finished with the possibility of another album until Eazy E died. There was so much in this story and it was 2 1/2 hours long as it was, to add the story of Dee Dee you would need to add a whole new movie. I am a strong woman and this was not a slight in my eyes, the story explained that this group was not a gang of men who were just raising Cain for no reason. They were drawing attention to a huge problem we still have in our country. NWA was not the group of angry men, the men in blue are the ones who hold that title.