Rock & Roll is more about rebellion than guitars. N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton officially took that baton away from rock: It's the album that made hip-hop the new rock & roll.

In the process, they changed the face of modern-day hip-hop. The first three songs on Straight Outta Compton are the most dangerous introduction to the gangsta life I've ever heard. This wasn't Joe Pesci gangsta music; this was Robert De Niro: a little flat-footed, but scary. Even if you've never lived through all the gangbanging and police harassment they were talking about, you could tell there was truth there.

I was sixteen when I first heard them. Tariq, who would become Black Thought of the Roots, handed me his headphones in fifth-period chamber-orchestra class. The sheer novelty of them cursing just killed me. Of course, there was cursing in hip-hop -- a well-placed motherfucker on a Run-DMC record, for instance -- but for all the rambunctiousness of the Beastie Boys, there wasn't one curse word on License to Ill. There were certain things that artists didn't do, and you just didn't say, "Fuck the police." I ditched chamber orchestra and sat in the furnace room with a cheap-ass GE walkman and listened to that album from start to finish.

Ice Cube had the best voice in N.W.A and the most menacing lines ever. When he said, "The police are gonna have to come and get me off yo' ass," he was absolutely convincing. The weird thing is that now Cube is entering Bill Cosby territory. I was watching a preview for his latest movie, trying to explain to a kid next to me that twenty years ago his rhymes would have scared the bejesus out of you. Of course, Dre's production is incredible. He pioneered the "stop on a dime" break. There would be utter sonic confusion, and then, outta nowhere, the beats cut out so that either Eazy-E, MC Ren or Ice Cube could deliver the punch line. Check it out on "Straight Outta Compton," when each member introduces himself. No one else had done that in hip-hop.

And, yes, N.W.A's success proved again that controversy sells. They had no radio play, and that made their whole outlaw theme more appealing. When they got that threatening letter from the FBI, that was the jackpot. If the FBI sent me a letter today, I'd be like, "Word up! I'll call my publicist."

[From Issue 946 — April 15, 2004]

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