Straight Out­ta Compton

Music crit­ic Sasha Frere-Jones called it ​“The Comp­ton Moment”. The movie, the record, the head­phones, the ads, the memes – a com­mem­o­ra­tion of a musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion, uni­fied and com­mod­i­fied. In this moment, Comp­ton has ceased to be a place; it is to West Coast hip hop what Hol­ly­wood is to the Amer­i­can cin­e­ma – an idea and a promise.

The cov­er of Dr Dre’s accom­pa­ny­ing album even replaces the Hol­ly­wood­land sign with one say­ing ​“Comp­ton”. While the men canon­ised in Straight Out­ta Comp­ton left the area decades ago – ​“I moved out of the hood for good, d’ya blame me?” Dre rapped on ​‘The Watch­er’ in 1999 – it is a notion that has come to define not only their iden­ti­ties, but the move­ment they helped cre­ate. It is the sto­ry of ​’80s rap col­lec­tive NWA, the influ­en­tial prog­en­i­tors of gang­ster rap, whose debut record, ​‘Straight Out­ta Comp­ton’, was a defin­ing part of the hip hop aes­thet­ic of the late 20^th cen­tu­ry. The pic­ture is an impos­ing, self-con­scious epic, blink­ered and cel­e­bra­to­ry, con­struct­ed with an Old Hol­ly­wood zeal for lega­cy preser­va­tion. It feels like a cul­tur­al mile­stone – a rags-to-rich­es sto­ry told with enough clas­si­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty to lionise a move­ment that has long been vil­i­fied and mar­gin­alised by the main­stream cul­tur­al narrative.

Indeed, the whole release feels like an old-fash­ioned stu­dio pack­age, care­ful­ly cal­i­brat­ed for max­i­mum impact. Now that these men are part of the estab­lish­ment – Dre is the bil­lion­aire founder of Beats Elec­tron­ics – it fol­lows that they should set out to make the first grand, sweep­ing Hol­ly­wood rap movie. The pre­vail­ing notion is that of lega­cy, and thus the ques­tion of author­ship becomes key. Direc­tor F Gary Gray is a long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor of Dre and Ice Cube and it is very much their vision that appears onscreen. Much has already been made of key events omit­ted from the film – Dre’s abu­sive past with women being the most heinous example.

But intel­li­gent audi­ences will recog­nise that the film rep­re­sents a sanc­tioned truth, and it should be judged on those terms. It is the Sergeant York of rap movies – a huge­ly accom­plished enter­tain­ment prop­a­gat­ing a use­ful myth. Of course, myth­mak­ing is an inte­gral part of hip hop’s modus operan­di (as has been lam­pooned in bril­liant rap mock­u­men­taries Fear of a Black Hat and CB4), and Straight Out­ta Comp­ton is sim­ply anoth­er part of this estab­lished narrative.

It is a pic­ture of unadul­ter­at­ed exu­ber­ance and sur­pris­ing­ly expan­sive reach. The three leads who play the key mem­bers of the group – Ice Cube (O’Shea Jack­son, Jr – his real life son), Dre (Cur­tis Hawkins) and Eazy‑E (Jason Mitchell) – are each extra­or­di­nar­i­ly assured. While struc­tural­ly episod­ic, the film rarely los­es sight of its main the­mat­ic thrust – the infal­li­ble artis­tic dri­ve of its cen­tral trio. Though Eazy‑E did not live to see his lega­cy come to fruition, Dre and Ice Cube find them­selves in the curi­ous posi­tion of being elder states­men in a young man’s game and, while both have been uneasy to the point of can­tan­ker­ous­ness about this role in the past (“We start­ed this gangs­ta shit / And this the moth­er­fuck­ing thanks I get?”), the immense joy of cre­ativ­i­ty evi­dent in Straight Out­ta Comp­ton sug­gests a belat­ed rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with their lot.

With the film arriv­ing in the sum­mer of 2015, Straight Out­ta Comp­ton inevitably finds itself a part of the post-Fer­gu­son nar­ra­tive. Through­out the pic­ture, we are con­front­ed with that hor­ri­bly famil­iar image of young black bod­ies being slammed against the pave­ment by the police. From the group itself to Rod­ney King, it’s an image that’s ingrained in the cel­lu­loid. As Dre says on ​‘It’s All on Me’, ​“Took that feel­ing to the stu­dio and cued it up.” The result, of course, was ​‘Fuck Tha Police’. The hys­ter­i­cal after­math of the song is shown in all its ugly infamy, with the group find­ing them­selves increas­ing­ly tar­get­ed by law enforce­ment. The moment in which the song is played against police orders in Detroit is elec­tri­fy­ing – that beau­ti­ful alche­my of youth­ful ener­gy and right­eous anger. It’s skin tingling.

The film is book­end­ed by two trans­ac­tions – the first is a drug deal gone wrong and the sec­ond is the Beats buy­out by Apple in 2014 (which is not­ed in the cred­its), mak­ing Dr Dre the rich­est man in rap. Gray proves him­self to be sur­pris­ing­ly adroit at tal­ly­ing these two seem­ing­ly dis­parate states. Though the rap fix­a­tion on mon­ey is a fre­quent sub­ject of mock­ery, Straight Out­ta Comp­ton shows fis­cal secu­ri­ty as the only anti­dote to the uncer­tain­ty of the dead­ly streets. In this sense, the pic­ture recalls the tra­jec­to­ry of the box­ing movie – mar­gin­alised young men pur­su­ing their voca­tion to escape their begin­nings, and suf­fer­ing exploita­tion at the hands of more pow­er­ful author­i­ty fig­ures. When mon­ey is pre­car­i­ous, self-preser­va­tion becomes an all-con­sum­ing state; hence the mantra-like affir­ma­tions of wealth per­me­at­ing rap cul­ture. In the case of NWA, it also hap­pened to turn rebels into the estab­lish­ment. Straight Out­ta Comp­ton rep­re­sents a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of sorts.