1. Straight Outta Compton
2. Fuck tha Police
3. Gangsta Gangsta
4. If It Ain’t Ruff
5. Parental Discretion Iz Advised
6. 8 Ball
7. Something Like That
8. Express Yourself
9. Compton’s n the House
10. I Ain’t tha 1
11. Dopeman
12. Quiet on the Set
13. Something 2 Dance 2
Tim Farron is Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Member of Parliament for Westmorland and Lonsdale in the Lake District. He was born in Lancaster and before entering politics he worked at Lancaster University.
In his spare time Tim enjoys walking in the countryside with his wife Rosie and their four children, and watching his beloved Blackburn Rovers attempt to return to the Premier League.
Steve McQueen – Prefab Sprout
The Clash’s first album (but the US version because it’s got ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ and ‘Complete Control’ on it)
Since I Left You – The Avalanches
Here’s the story of N.W.A., told over four meetings.
Consider the following:
Los Angeles is spread over 465 square miles and has 8,400 police officers.
New York is spread over 321 square miles and has 39,110 police officers.
If you boil that down, it means that Los Angeles has to maintain law and order with 103 fewer police officers per square mile. The odds don’t seem right, do they? How can such a small police force effectively cover such a large area?
The answer was simple – they were brutal, they intimidated the streets. They would say, generously, they were preventing crimes before they happened, laying down the law whether it was broken or not. Yet the truth was less about police work, or justice. They were sending a message.
Indeed, their own police chief, Daryl Gates, once said the following:
‘Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.’
That’s not an overheard remark, or a slip of the tongue, that was a comment made before the US Senate. The Los Angeles Chief of Police, in front of the country’s elected representatives, actually said that casual drug users should be taken out and shot.
And no one did anything.
If there was one particular district in LA that was singled out for special treatment from the LAPD it was Compton. Unemployment and poverty were widespread there, and the largely African-American population was in the grip of a crack cocaine epidemic that was destroying nearly everything in sight.
The police decided to resort to extreme measures to solve the problem – they acquired a tank and flattened properties in a perfunctory search for drugs and criminality. On one occasion Nancy Reagan cheerfully sat in on one of the raids.
She ate a fruit salad as the tank knocked down the walls of someone’s home.
After finding just one gram of crack, she was quoted as saying:
‘I saw people on the floor, rooms that were unfurnished… all very depressing. These people in here are beyond the point of teaching and rehabilitating. There’s no life, and that’s very discouraging.’
And no one did anything.
Jerry Heller had brought Elton John and Pink Floyd to America. He’d represented Van Morrison, ELO, Marvin Gaye, The Who, Journey, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Four Tops and Black Sabbath. Yet, in the mid-eighties, he’d run out of talent and found himself loitering around LA trying to catch a break.
His friend Lonzo approaches him in 1987:
‘Hey, Jerry. I got this Compton guy keeps saying he wants to meet you.’
‘Yeah? A rapper?’ Jerry asks.
‘Nah. He’s like a street guy, got a lot of big ideas. He says he wants to start a record store or something.’
Jerry’s heard it all before. Forty-seven and lacking whatever enthusiasm he once had, he tells his friend to spare him the story and move along.
But he doesn’t. Over the next weeks and months, Lonzo keeps chasing Jerry about the kid from Compton:
‘Hey, man. You gotta see this Compton guy. He’s on at me all the time about it.’
Heller became simultaneously exasperated and intrigued. On the one hand, he ignored his friend while, on the other, he knew that playing hard to get was a deliberate move and only the most determined would get through his defences. The kid from Compton, whoever he was, was playing his part to perfection by refusing to give up.
Finally, Lonzo approached Heller again.
‘Listen, Jerry. The guy says he’ll pay me for an introduction to you.’
Heller’s ears pricked up.
‘How much?’
‘Seven hundred and fifty,’ Lonzo replied, ‘and to be honest I could use the money.’
It wasn’t the money that swayed Heller, or a sense of duty to his friend. He just appreciated the initiative, the fact that some kid he didn’t even know was prepared to offer $750 just to meet him.
Heller gave in.
On Tuesday 3 March, 1987, a car pulled up outside Heller’s business premises and out stepped a short kid wearing wraparound sunglasses and a Raiders cap.
Lonzo introduced them: ‘Jerry, this is Eric Wright, aka Eazy-E.’
Easy said nothing, just pulled out a roll of notes from his sock and paid Lonzo his finder’s fee on the spot. Heller watched on, charmed by the fact that the kid didn’t once move his lips while he was counting the money.
Heller asks, ‘You want to play me something?’
Eazy speaks for the first time.
‘Sure.’
He played him ‘Boyz-n-the-Hood’, ‘8 Ball’ and ‘Dopeman’ and Heller thought it was the best thing he’d heard in years.
Eazy then began to talk.
‘I want to start my own label. A place where an artist could work without anyone looking over his shoulder, telling him what he could and could not do – a free environment, no rules, no catering to any taste other than the artist’s own.’
Heller asked him if the label had a name.
‘Ruthless Records,’ Eazy said.
Heller asked him if his group had a name.
‘N.W.A.,’ Eazy said.
‘What’s that mean, “No Whites Allowed”?’ asked Heller.
Eazy laughed for the first time during the meeting.
‘Sort of,’ he said.
Heller spins through his Rolodex, his life’s work flicking before him. He needs a friend, someone to help him distribute. He finally arrives at Joe Smith, chairman of Capitol Records – nicknamed The Gentleman.
Heller visits the Capitol Building, optimistically designed to look like a stack of hit singles, and excitedly enters Smith’s office.
He played him ‘Boyz n the Hood’.
Smith was horrified.
Heller then flipped it over and played ‘Dopeman’.
Smith was still horrified.
‘Stop, stop!’
There was an uncomfortable silence between the two men. And then Smith gave his verdict:
‘Jerry, what makes you think anyone is going to buy this garbage? Who’s going to listen? Tell me, who’s going to play this? No radio station in the world.’
Heller tried his best to convince Smith. He reminded him of The Stones, The Sex Pistols and a whole host of other bands that seemed ‘too much’ to one generation but never enough for another.
Smith held his ground.
‘This crap is never going to make it.’
He then offered Heller a million dollars, just for the rights to the name Ruthless Records.
‘It’s a great name. Really, I’ll have my girl bring in the chequebook.’
‘I don’t want to sell the name. I want to sell the music,’ insisted Heller.
‘Never. It’ll never sell.’
Heller left the office dejected and gave Eazy-E the bad news.
‘The gentleman at Capitol said no.’
Eazy absorbed the information, without a hint of reaction.
‘That’s cool,’ he said. ‘Fuck ’em.’
Heller was desperate. Everyone had turned their back on him and he was running out of options. In a move befitting the situation, he set up a meeting with Priority Records.
Who was the biggest act on Priority at the time?
A cartoon group called The California Raisins who mostly sang Motown covers.
Heller walked into their offices, this time accompanied by Eazy-E, and played ‘Straight Outta Compton’:
‘You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.’
The people in the room were silent.
Straight outta Compton
Crazy motherfucker called Ice Cube
From the gang called Niggas with Attitude
It was a shock to the system for a label used to dealing with animated dried fruit.
Heller then played ‘Fuck tha Police’:
Fuck tha police coming straight from the underground
A young nigga got it bad cos I’m brown
The people in the room were still silent.
Then Heller went in, business to business. He used all his old tricks and tried to convince them that Priority was the best ‘fit’ for N.W.A. Yet the executives just sat there in silence. They still hadn’t spoken since they heard ‘Straight Outta Compton’.
Finally, Eazy interjected. He’d watched the whole performance from the corner and felt it was time to say something:
‘Why don’t you at least come down and hear the band play?’ he asked.
‘OK,’ they replied.
Eazy-E knew he had them.
It could never last. The tension, and the attention, brought on by success started to tear it down within a couple of years.
Ice Cube, the band’s lyricist, had left amid accusations of being ripped off.
Dr Dre, the producer, was being courted by record labels that, all of a sudden, were ready to listen.
‘We got to work this shit out,’ Dre says as he picks up the phone to Eazy.
Eazy doesn’t say anything.
‘This is important,’ Dre pleads. ‘You want to get with me up here?’
They arrange to meet at the studio, two old friends from Compton trying to work out how they can keep this thing together. When Eazy arrives, though, Dre isn’t there. Instead, Suge Knight walks in, flanked by bodyguards holding baseball bats.
Eazy knows he’s been set up.
‘You got to sign this,’ Knight says, holding up a contract that releases Dre from his commitment to Ruthless Records.
Eazy doesn’t move.
‘You see that white van parked down there on the street?’ Knight continues. ‘We got Jerry Heller tied up in the back of that van, gun to his head, blow his goddam fucking brains out.’
Eazy doesn’t move.
‘We can get your moms too. You want us to?’
Eazy signs.
It was the end of N.W.A. They’d sent a message of their own, but now it was time for the start of something else.
On 3 March 1991, three African-American men were driving along the freeway in the San Fernando Valley. A police car noticed the driver was speeding and started to pursue him.
The driver started to panic.
He was on parole for a previous robbery conviction and was concerned that this could be seen as a violation. He’d also drunk some alcohol during the evening and wasn’t sure whether he was over the limit or not. Rather than taking any chances, he decided to put his foot down and outrun the police. The pursuit raced through residential suburbs, with multiple police cars joining the hunt and a helicopter hovering overhead.
Eventually, they cornered the car and ordered the passengers out of the vehicle.
The first to emerge, Bryant Allen, was kicked, taunted and threatened.
The second to emerge, Freddie Helms, was hit on the head while lying on the ground.
Finally, the driver emerged – Rodney King.
He laughed, he smiled, he waved to the helicopter overhead.
The police officers forced him to the ground, kicked him six times and struck him thirty-three times with their batons while, unbeknown to them, the entire incident was being filmed from across the street. King was eventually arrested and taken to hospital where he was treated for a fractured facial bone, a broken right ankle and an assortment of bruises and lacerations.
During his treatment, a nurse watched as the police officers that brought him in laughed and bragged about how many times they’d hit him.
But then the film of the incident went public.
America saw how the LAPD policed its streets and was rightly horrified. There were calls for both justice and calm. The police had to be arrested, the men who were seen to be so guilty had to be punished and brought before the law that they themselves had bent out of shape.
On 22 April 1992, a jury of ten whites, one Latino and one Asian acquitted the police officers. They were free to go.
And this time, the people did do something.
N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton is a classic album, one of those albums you must listen to before you die.
So, question number one is: given that I am a self-proclaimed music nerd, why did I never buy this record and why have I never knowingly listened to it all the way through before?
Well, I’m not completely sure. Maybe because there are only so many hours in the day and you can’t listen to everything? Maybe because rap is not my thing? But then again I bought, love and still listen to De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising… but De La Soul are safe and cuddly, so maybe Straight Outta Compton is too edgy, sweary, violent and misogynistic for a tame chap like me? Actually, that might well be it… but perhaps the main reason is that I felt it wasn’t for me.
Forgive me, but I’ve always had a problem with David Cameron saying that he likes The Smiths, in particular that he likes The Queen is Dead. There’s a line in ‘Panic’ that goes, ‘the music they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life…’ I don’t want to be an inverse snob, but The Smiths do not sing to David Cameron about anything in his life at all. What Morrissey sings cannot possibly resonate with him. I’m a northern working-class bloke, an angsty eighties teenager. The Smiths say plenty to me about my life.
Now, for some music that doesn’t matter. Even fairly avant-garde or groundbreaking stuff like The White Stripes, Cocteau Twins, Blur aren’t setting out a manifesto or representing anyone or anything. There isn’t an ideology simmering away there, they aren’t speaking of their particular life experiences, offering a personal sense of belonging to those who share that identity and that’s absolutely fine – and I love all three of those bands, by the way, and for what it’s worth, I would have no complaints if the PM liked any of them; indeed he has my blessing!
But N.W.A. have a simmering ideology, a boiling one even. They speak about their lives, they share their identity. There is fury in this album which is as authentic and sincere as it is foul-mouthed and misogynistic. But I’m not straight outta Compton, I’m straight out o’ Preston and what I knew about N.W.A. is that they said little to me about my life… which is absolutely OK, but I simply – in my over-earnest way – felt that I would be insincere, inauthentic, a wannabe, a fake, if I got into N.W.A. So I listened to all the Madchester stuff instead.
So, excuses over…
Over the years I’ve come to accept that music is music and that I should stop being so up myself and just listen to stuff!!
It’s a good piece of work. To misquote Public Enemy, you can believe the hype. This is an important and influential album but it is also a great musical accomplishment. It’s full of energy, sincerity and lyrical intelligence. It’s also pretty funky, decent tunes. The last track, ‘Something 2 Dance 2’, is preceded by several other tracks that you can most certainly dance to. In fact, listening to the album I have flashbacks of being at university in Newcastle dancing to a few of these – in particular track four, ‘If It Ain’t Ruff’, which has a knowingly jazzy feel to it.
Much of the rap that I’d listened to in the eighties was about the samples that underpinned the rap as much as the words themselves. This album is well produced, it’s full of good tunes and clever mixes, but the words are king. All music is derivative, there’s nothing new under the sun, but my first impression is that the lyrical focus of this album owes more to Gil Scott-Heron than to earlier rap artists. Only Gil Scott-Heron didn’t swear so often, he appeared to respect women and he had a few solutions to the problems he identified. And I now sound like my dad…
So let’s get my criticisms out of the way. The swearing is ridiculous – it sounds like a pastiche of itself. I couldn’t help laughing at it, thinking of Chris Morris’s ‘Uzi Lover’ from Brass Eye or the appallingly toilet-mouthed Rude Kid from the pages of Viz.
Worst of all is the way women are spoken about. The language is more than misogynistic – it is a blanket treatment of women as sex objects and nothing more. Some will say that we have to accept this as social realism and all that – and again I don’t doubt their sincerity – but to be angry at society and authority, or to celebrate hedonism, doesn’t require such a loveless, graceless and damaging assault on womankind.
Oh, and I should point out that much as I admire Eazy-E, Dr Dre and Ice Cube, the Liberal Democrats take a rather different position to them on law and order…
That may all sound pretty damning, but on balance I have to say I liked the record.
The opening burst of the title track, ‘F*** tha Police’, and ‘Gangsta Gangsta’ leave you very clear over what these guys are about! Self-referential, dramatic backdrops, fresh, brave, resonant of early punk, hedonism with a bit of nihilism… and no Chic bass lines.
Having established themselves, N.W.A. then seem to feel free to let the tunes elbow their way in. ‘If It Ain’t Ruff’, ‘Parental Discretion’, ‘Something Like That’ and ‘Express Yourself’ contain laid-back grooves, the occasional recognisable sample and an odd piano loop.
The rest of the album focuses again heavily on the rhymes and the lyrical content. Ice Cube’s rant against women in ‘I Ain’t tha 1’ contains the delightful line, addressed to his female companion, ‘I got what I wanted – beat it’, which I suppose makes this track the closest thing N.W.A. get to a tender love song…
‘Compton’s n the House’ sounds clichéd but only because I’ve heard so many copying this kind of impressively egotistical attack on wannabes, copycats and also-rans over the last twenty years. It’s easy to forget that this isn’t a cliché, we are listening to the originals. We finish with ‘Something 2 Dance 2’. Great track, and incredibly well produced… indeed the album is a great piece of production as well as a great musical work.
Music is all about connections, about ‘what does this remind me of?’ The album this one reminded me of the most is The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks. They share the same air of desperation, of churning out a shocking but brilliant piece of work almost as if they had no choice to do anything else. And both albums were influential beyond compare. Both albums made music accessible – and the making of music affordable and comprehensible. To me, almost everything worthwhile in music in the last forty years owes something to the Pistols. Straight Outta Compton is certainly worthwhile, and it owes plenty to Johnny Rotten and co.
I would listen to it again, but not with the kids around…
I’d give it 8 out of 10 artistically, but for my personal enjoyment of it more like 6 out of 10.