Straight Outta Compton is the debut[5]studio album by American hip-hop group N.W.A, released on January 25, 1989, through Priority and Ruthless Records.[1][6][7] It was produced by N.W.A members Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, with lyrics written Eazy-E, Ice Cube and MC Ren, alongside contributions from Ruthless rapper and N.W.A affiliate the D.O.C.[6] 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.”[6][8][9]
In July 1989, despite receiving limited radio airplay outside of the Los Angeles area,[7]Straight Outta Compton became the first gangsta rap album to earn platinum certification, signifying over one million copies sold.[6] The album reached number nine on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and number 37 on the Billboard 200 that same year.[10] It attracted extensive media attention and is widely credited with accelerating the rise of hardcore gangsta rap in mainstream hip hop.[11] 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.[12]
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."[13] In 2015, a red cassette reissue[14] and the release of the biographical film Straight Outta Compton led to renewed commercial success, with the album later certified triple platinum.[6] In 2016, it became the first rap album inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame,[15] and in 2017, it was added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[16]
Background
During most of the 1980s, New York City—the birthplace of hip-hop—remained the genre's primary creative and commercial center,[17][18] while Los Angeles County played a secondary role.[19] 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.[citation needed] The dominant local style was electro rap or “funk hop,”[20] influenced by tracks such as the New York-based 1982 hit "Planet Rock".[17] In contrast, East Coast hip-hop had begun prioritizing lyricism following the commercial and cultural success of Run-DMC's self-titled 1984 album.[19]
As the decade progressed, recording vocal performances over electro rap instrumentals became increasingly common. The World Class Wreckin' Cru, featuring Dr. Dre and DJ Yella, released one of the first West Coast rap albums issued by a major record label.[19] Another prominent figure to emerge was Ice-T, whose 1986 single "6 in the Mornin'" drew inspiration from Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D's 1985 track "P.S.K. What Does It Mean?"[19][17][21] 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".[19][17]
In 1987, Eric Wright, a Compton resident and member of the Kelly Park Crips, founded the independent label Ruthless Records.[19] Through his prior activities, Wright had established connections with Dr. Dre and Arabian Prince, two Los Angeles producers and artists seeking greater financial control over their work.[22] 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".[23] 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.[20][23] Released under the collective name N.W.A, "Boyz-n-the-Hood" became a regional success, though some critics noted similarities to Schoolly D’s "P.S.K." and found its tempo unsuitable for dancing.[17]
Building on Ice-T's precedent, N.W.A developed a distinct approach to gangsta rap characterized by detailed depictions of street life, hostility toward authority, and references to violence.[24] The group attempted to broaden its audience by providing radio edits to local stations such as KDAY,[7] but received minimal radio play. Despite this, the album achieved significant commercial success, selling over one million copies and becoming the first gangsta rap album to earn platinum certification.[19][25] As interest in the Los Angeles rap scene grew,[26] artists such as MC Eiht of Compton's Most Wanted emerged in response,[27] marking a broader regional shift from dance-oriented to hardcore rap styles.[19]
Internationally, N.W.A became a leading representative of gangsta rap. The group's explicit and confrontational lyrics prompted opposition from law enforcement agencies and media outlets; the FBI issued a warning letter to Ruthless Records, MTV banned the "Straight Outta Compton" music video, several venues refused to host N.W.A concerts, and some police officers declined to provide security for their shows.[6][25][28] These controversies reinforced N.W.A's anti-establishment image, which the members would later emphasize in subsequent recordings.[6][29][30]
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."[31]
Record production
The album was recorded and produced in Audio Achievements Studio in Torrance, California, for $12,000. Dr. Dre, in a 1993 interview, recalls, "I threw that thing together in six weeks so we could have something to sell out of the trunk."[6]
In an incident recalled in Jerry Heller's book, police approached the group while they were standing outside the studio in 1988 and demanded them to get on their knees and show ID without explanation. Outraged by the experience, Cube began writing the lyrics that would become "Fuck tha Police".[32] 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.[6]
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.[6]
Content
Reflecting in 2002, Rolling Stone writer Jon Caramanica calls the album a "bombastic, cacophonous car ride through Los Angeles' burnt-out and ignored hoods".[34] In a contemporary review, rather, Mark Holmberg, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, calls it "a preacher-provoking, mother-maddening, reality-stinks" album that "wallows in gangs, doping, drive-by shootings, brutal sexism, cop slamming and racism".[35]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."[36] 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".[26]
First, the title track, smearing and menacing civilians and police, men and women, while women receive gruff sexual advances, too, even threatens to "smother your mother". 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.[37] "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.[6]
The term "gangsta rap", soon to arise in journalism, had not been coined yet.[6] According to Ice Cube, the rappers themselves called it "reality rap".[6] Indicting N.W.A as its leading example, journalist David Mills, in 1990, acknowledges, "The hard-core street rappers defend their violent lyrics as a reflection of 'reality'. But for all the gunshots they mix into their music, rappers rarely try to dramatize that reality" empathetically. "It's easier for them to imagine themselves pulling the trigger."[38] 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".[39] In Norman's view, "They describe it with the same nonjudgmental resignation that a Kansan might use about a tornado."[39] Steve Huey, writing for AllMusic, considered that "Straight Outta Compton's insistent claims of reality ring a little hollow today, since it hardly ever depicts consequences. But despite all the romanticized invincibility, the force and detail of Ice Cube's writing makes the exaggerations resonate."[26]
Release
Straight Outta Compton was originally intended for release in the fall of 1988,[40] but Ruthless/Priority Records delayed the album to early 1989 so that it would not interfere with both Eazy-E's solo debut album Eazy-Duz-It and the belated success of N.W.A. and the Posse,[1] the latter of which had not appeared on the Billboard charts until the summer of 1988.[41][42] 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.[43]
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.[44]Los Angeles Times critic Dennis Hunt anticipates that listeners may be offended by the album's lack of "moralizing", "even more so than the searing street language", and advises, "To appreciate this remarkable, disturbing album you have to approach it for what it is—a no-holds-barred, audio-documentary of ghetto life."[45] On the other hand, Cary Darling, in California's Orange County Register, while thinking that the lyrics make Ice-T "look like a Cub Scout", ultimately deems Straight Outta Compton "curiously uninvolving", as it "lacks the insight and passion that put the best work by the likes of Boogie Down Productions, Ice-T and Public Enemy so far ahead of the field".[49]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."[48]
In the UK, Sounds reviewer Roy Wilkinson declared Straight Outta Compton "rap's answer to Slayer's Reign in Blood—a record the majors were scared to touch", continuing, "This is rock made genuinely wild again. Beware, the pop jive of the current 'Express Yourself' single will in no way prepare you for the Magnum beat that fires here."[43] Other British publications were less enthusiastic. Paolo Hewitt of NME takes issue with the lyrics' "macho repetition and tunnel vision",[46] while in the Hi-Fi News & Record Review, Peter Clark, going further, calls the lyrics "unrelenting in their unpleasantness".[50] 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."[50] Charlie Dick, writing for Q, contends, "In the wake of Public Enemy and KRS-One, it is amazing that something this lightweight could cause such a stir. The all-mouth-and-trousers content is backed up by likable drum machine twittering, minimal instrumentation and duffish production."[47] Still, he predicts, "This regressive nonsense will be passed off as social commentary by thrill-seekers all across the free world."[47]
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".[36] Writing in retrospect, Steve Huey, in AllMusic, deems the album mainly just "raising hell" while posturing, but finds that "it still sounds refreshingly uncalculated because of its irreverent, gonzo sense of humor, still unfortunately rare in hardcore rap".[26] In the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide, Roni Sarig states that although Straight Outta Compton was viewed as a "perversion" of the "more politically sophisticated" style of hip-hop exemplified by Public Enemy, the album displays "a more righteous fury than the hundreds of copycats it spawned".[55]
Rankings
In 1994, British magazine Hip Hop Connection, placing the album third among rap's best albums, adds, "Straight Outta Compton sounded so exciting, insignificant details such as realism and integrity could be overlooked."[59] Hip-hop magazine The Source included Straight Outta Compton in its 1998 "100 Best Albums" list.[60] Television network VH1, in 2003, placed it 62nd.[61]Spin magazine, sorting the "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005", identified it 10th.[62]
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.[63]Time, in 2006, named it one of the 100 greatest albums of all time.[64]Vibe appraised it as one of the 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century.[65] In 2012, Slant Magazine listed it 18th among the "Best Albums of the 1980s".[31] In November 2016, Straight Outta Compton became the first rap album inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[15] 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".[16]
Commercial performance
Released on January 25, 1989,[1]Straight Outta Compton was N.W.A's best selling album; it attained gold certification, half a million copies sold, three months after its release.[66] Meanwhile, the album peaked at number 9 on Billboard's 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.[10][67] On July 18, 1989, the album was certified platinum, one million copies sold.[66] On March 27, 1992, Straight Outta Compton was certified double-platinum, two million copies sold; and on November 11, 2015, was certified triple-platinum, three million copies sold.[66]
By Priority Records' estimation, about 80% of Straight Outta Compton's sales occurred in suburban areas predominantly white.[68][69]
Approaching the August 2015 release of the film Straight Outta Compton, the album reentered the Billboard 200 at number 173.[70] The next week, it rose to number 97, another week later reached number 30[70]—beyond its 1989 peak position of #37—and on September 5 peaked at number 6.[71] Meanwhile, the album's title track entered the Billboard Hot 100 as N.W.A's first song in the Top 40,[72] and spent two weeks at number 38.[73]
Media presence
In 2004, the DigitaArts list 25 Best Albums Covers included Straight Outta Compton.[74] By the album's release, Arabian Prince, seen on the cover, had left N.W.A. Lacking him, a group photo taken by Ithaka Darin Pappas on November 11, 1988, at Pappa's studio apartment in Los Angeles' Miracle Mile district, has been repeatedly republished in media.[75] Pappas calls it "The Miracle Mile Shot",[76] It has been seen on The Source's May 1989 cover, the DVD cover of the 2015 documentary Kings Of Compton,[77][78] in France's Musée d'art contemporain de Marseille from 2017 to 2018,[79][80] and as a backdrop at N.W.A's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2016 in Brooklyn, New York.[81]
Sinéad O'Connor, then herself controversial, appraised in 1990 that "It's definitely the best rap record I've ever heard."[82] 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."[6]
1 2 3 4 Contrary to the album's copyright and publishing date of 1988, the following sources indicate that Straight Outta Compton was not officially released until at least early 1989:
1 2 3 David Diallo, ch. 10 "From electro-rap to G-funk: A social history of rap music in Los Angeles and Compton, California", in Mickey Hess, ed., Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide, Volume 1: East Coast and West Coast (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2010), pp 234–238.
↑ Wayne Marshall, "Kool Herc," in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Volume 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp 6–7Archived October 6, 2023, at the Wayback Machine .
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 David Diallo, ch. 10 "From electro-rap to G-funk: A social history of rap music in Los Angeles and Compton, California", in Mickey Hess, ed., Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide, Volume 1: East Coast and West Coast (Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press, 2010).
1 2 David Diallo, "Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg", in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp 319–321Archived September 20, 2023, at the Wayback Machine .
↑ Tom Moon, "The first great gangsta rap record: Straight Outta Compton: N.W.A", 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener's Life List (New York: Workman Publishing, 2008), p 557.
1 2 Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "N.W.A: Biography", AllMusic.com, Netaktion LLC, visited 26 Apr 2020.
↑ Robin D. G. Kelley, "Kickin' reality, kickin' ballistics: Gangsta rap and postindustrial Los Angeles", in William Eric Perkins, ed., Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), p 128Archived September 20, 2023, at the Wayback Machine .
1 2 Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "N.W.A: Biography", AllMusic.com, Netaktion LLC, visited 25 Apr 2020.
↑ Jason Birchmeier, "Compton's Most Wanted", in Chris Woodstra, John Bush & Stephen Thomas Erlewine, eds., All Music Guide: Required Listening, Volume 2: Old School Rap and Hip-Hop (New York, NY: Backbeat Books, 2008), p 15.
↑ Westhoff, Ben (2016). Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap. Hachette Books. p.79. ISBN978-0-3163-8389-9.
↑ George Ciccariello-Maher, "The 808", in Mickey Hess, ed., Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Volume 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), p 75Archived October 6, 2023, at the Wayback Machine .
↑ David Mills, "Rap's hostile fringe: From N.W.A. and others, 'reality'-based violence", Washington Post, 2 September 1990, G1, quoted by Soren Baker, The History of Rap and Hip-Hop (Farmingham Mills, Michigan: Lucent Books, 2012), p 58Archived October 6, 2023, at the Wayback Machine , and also cited by Loren Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2015), p 169Archived October 6, 2023, at the Wayback Machine .
↑ Mao, Chairman (October 2002). "Mad as F#@%". Blender. Vol.1, no.10. New York. p.142. Archived from the original on April 19, 2010. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
↑ Scott Warfield, "N.W.A.", in Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith & Anthony J. Fonseca, eds., Hip Hop Around the World: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2018), p 535.
↑ Terry McDermott, "NWA: Straight Outta Compton", Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr 2002, archived by "Davey D", FNV Newsletter website.
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