Here's a quick take on Straight Outta Compton from fellow Georgia College alum Daniel Troutman. Like a lot of people, has conflicting thoughts about whether to see the N.W.A. biopic in theaters. Here's an excerpt:
Although they may not have intended it, their music has been used by record labels to create a globally popular genre of music that perpetuates harmful Black stereotypes, endorses community violence, crime, drugs, and assault on women.
I take pride in saying I knew about Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy E and DJ Yella before the recent rush of nostalgia. N.W.A. first made my playlist back in '05. I was a high school junior in search of new music to download and stumbled on their catalog. After hours of listening and dozens of illegal downloads (F*** The Police, right?) I could call out the lyrics to the mainstream hits like Express Yourself as well as some of the lesser known, more explicit ones like Gangsta Gangsta and Eazy Duz It. These same tracks are played throughout Compton, while the part of their catalog that got them them well deserved criticism (A B**** Iz A B****) is mostly absent. F. Gary Gray's 2 1/2 hour feature played it safe; let the movie tell it, these guys were thugs who had only good intentions.
Knowing that Gray was a friend of Cube, I didn't expect much else. As a long time fan, I knew the bad stuff before the Compton's premiere. I read about Dr. Dre beating up Dee Barnes. I knew Eazy E's rhymes were mostly about shooting people who weren't crooked cops and having "bitches galore". Listening to the unedited version of the album Straight Outta Compton was uncomfortable the first time I heard it and still is today.
I don't practice or condone violence against women, verbal or physical. I don't think there's any way to make it OK for an artist to do so in real life or in a song. So why did I pay to see their film last week?
I can't speak for everyone who bought a ticket to see Compton, but for me raunchy lyrics were never the real draw. I was more fascinated by the story and circumstances behind their rise. When the comparatively squeaky clean Run-DMC had the mainstream ready to fully embrace rap, five foul-mouthed guys from a city nobody had ever heard of made records about toting sawed off shotguns and carjacking- and people ate it up.
Music that had conservatives protesting N.W.A. also landed the group's members dinner with the President, a starring role in an Academy Award nominated film and later making billionaire deals with Apple and joining Hollywood's A-list.
There are some who'll see Compton because they like their entertainment with gratuitous violence and sex. But for others (like me) the story is the main attraction. When you know all the twists that took place in the story of N.W.A., Jerry Heller and Death Row Records between 1986-95, it's not hard to see how the movie's original draft had its total run time clocked at well over 3 hours. Some of the scenes that did wind up in the movie aren't particularly flattering to the main subjects from a morally conservative perspective- I found the hotel party scene more disgusting than humorous, anachronistic jokes aside. That aside, movie goers shouldn't feel guilty about enjoying the film.
Paying to see Compton in theaters doesn't mean I support all of N.W.A.'s antics more than seeing American Gangster or The Wolf of Wallstreet made me a fan of heroin trafficking or corporate fraud. The main focus of a feature film is to entertain; anyone looking to the genre for an objective history lesson will always end up disappointed. Full stories with three perspectives (his, theirs and what really happened) aren't even present in documentaries, let alone fully scripted projects like Compton. Despite whatever rehearsed answers are given by Cube, Dre or Grey in promotional interviews this movie was made for one reason: to line pockets and manufacture legacies.
Is Compton void of facts that weren't pretty but pertinent to telling the whole truth? Absolutely. Are the excuses for doing so, as told by Gray, valid? Not really. An exponentially larger audience will exit N.W.A.'s momentary resurgence with a slanted viewpoint that leaves out the ugly part of their rise. That's not fair. It's not right. I wish a mention of Dre's assault on Barnes was allowed into the script. I wish people would hold Ice Cube more accountable for holding a tired argument against not using "bitch" so much. But so goes Hollywood- the stories are told by the ones with the power to tell them, right or wrong.
