![]() Seated next to him was the relatively stoic Dr. Much like his rap persona onstage or his characters in films like “Friday,” the 46-year-old screenwriter and actor filled the room with a booming voice and gregarious presence. “When we were working on the script, it had to chronicle issues of the day, what we were up against, what forged N.W.A,” said an animated Ice Cube later in a trailer a few miles from the location of the shoot. The partial reunion of N.W.A was the most talked-about show among many high-profile sets at the recent BET Experience festival downtown. The hip-hop-referencing “Dope,” a small film based in Inglewood (where its director grew up), garnered major attention when it was released a few months ago. hip-hop culture is once again permeating the larger world of entertainment.Ĭompton rap artists Kendrick Lamar and YG have contributed two of the most critically acclaimed albums of the last year. And given the current, post-Ferguson news cycle, it’s perhaps no coincidence that South L.A. “Straight Outta Compton” may be a period film, but it hits at issues right out of today’s headlines, particularly the treatment of minorities at the hands of law enforcement. Though the crack cocaine epidemic they rapped about was a nationwide scourge, the other elements that influenced their sound - drive-bys shootings, Crips and Bloods, a militarized police force with battering rams (tank-like vehicles the LAPD used to tear down suspected crack dens) - were strictly L.A. N.W.A’s music emerged before the riots and the videotaped beating of Rodney King by police, providing a snapshot of an L.A. Now to see it on the big screen - it’s just a natural progression.” You experience it as opposed to just listening. “If you listen to their music closely, a lot of what they wrote was really visual,” says Gray, 46, who also grew up in South L.A. Eric Wright) in 1995 from complications due to AIDS. The story follows N.W.A from its scrappy beginnings in the mid-’80s to its unlikely success to the death of core member Eazy-E (a.k.a. Gary Gray (“Friday,” “The Negotiator”), the Universal Pictures release chronicles the journey of the five young men as they changed the face of rap - and pop culture - on the power of one very raw, very bold album. Audiences will soon relive the beginnings of gangsta rap as well when the highly anticipated and likely controversial film hits theaters Aug.
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