Straight Outta Compton

When a movie about aliens, robots, or spies (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) comes out, that's without a doubt the first movie I always go see in the theater. Unless of course that movie stars the scrub who almost single handedly ruined my childhood memories of the Lone Ranger in Armie Hammer. I should have known that Gore Verbinski and an over the hill Johnny Depp would spell disaster for the modern day Western.

But obviously I chalked that up as a lesson learned and was not about to make the same mistake again. So I went to go see another movie that was also about my childhood in Straight Outta Compton. Now I realize that I am straight out of Victoria, Texas but growing up as kid, all I kept hearing about was this dangerous gang of rappers from Los Angeles called N.W.A. This was before the age of Internet, so all I had available to me was magazines. And when Black magazines like Ebony and Jet are scared of you, then you know you have to be crazy. But something about F the Police resonated with me. Hearing all the stories from my cousins who lived in real cities made me well aware of the fact that something was seriously wrong with the way that law enforcement viewed minority youth; and this was just our way of letting people know about it.

Well obviously the rest is history as N.W.A. blew up and eventually became one of the most influential groups in music today. Director F. Gary Gray (The Negotiator) starts the movie off with one of the most intense scenes you will ever see in what is basically a music documentary. He shows you the world that Eazy-E was caught up in before he became Eazy-E. He was living the dangerous life of a drug dealer and was facing either death or serious jail time if he didn't change things and change things rather quickly.

He also shows you Dr. Dre before he became Dr. Dre; he was a young kid who's entire world was making music but was also struggling with the issues he was having at home. And then he finally shows you the star of the movie, and some would even say the star of N.W.A., in Ice Cube. If Dre was the soul of N.W.A. then Ice Cube was clearly the heartbeat. He was truly the ghetto journalist he claimed to be as he was able to almost poetically write about the world he grew up in.

Well once they decided to put their talents together, they took the world by storm. But greed and the shady manager Jerry Heller tore them apart and what was once the world's greatest super group eventually broke up. Gray in an entertaining and funny manner takes you through all of this and the aftermath that followed.

Some of the film's best scenes are when the group is on tour and you get to see how their music connects with everyone who hears it. You almost feel as though you were the one who was being constantly harassed by the police. Heck, even I almost got up in the theater with my portable placard and started a Stop the Penis Party chant! That's a P.C.U. reference in case you didn't catch it.

The film's clear highlight is when Ice Cube hears N.W.A.'s diss of him on record for the first time. He immediately goes into the studio and writes what is possibly the best diss record of all time. The movie almost plays No Vaseline in its entirety and everyone in the theater instantly knew who the king of N.W.A. was.

I honestly believe that some people were hearing it for the first time as they were clearly losing their minds over how genius it was. Anyway, Straight Outta Compton is a powerful movie about five friends who found a way to better their lives and change the world in the process. If you call yourself a fan of hip hop, then there is no way that you can miss this movie.

It runs about 20 minutes too long but any movie that showcases an artist who can make a room full of hot girls chant Gimme that Nut over and over again, gets a free pass from me. This is one of the better movies of the year and it gets a solid rating of VERY FRESH.