The legend goes that, in ‘87, Eazy bailed Dre out of jail in exchange for his production services. When Eazy got the itch to form his own record label-and, shortly after, to become one of its flagship artists-he knew he needed a producer to serve as its musical backbone. It was also at Eve’s that the DJs formed an alliance with Ice Cube. The Wreckin’ Cru ran the gamut from R&B to electro, and served as a proving ground for Yella and Dre to hone their skills on the decks and to learn to manipulate crowds. The creative underpinnings of N.W.A can be traced back to Eve’s After Dark, the nightclub on Avalon Blvd that spawned the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, a DJ crew that included Yella and Dre. In the 50s and early ‘60s, Compton was a desirable suburb for black Angelenos by the ‘80s, when Dre, Eazy, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella (and founding member Arabian Prince) were coming of age, it was decaying and over-policed.Īs has been the case across cultures and eras, this brutal hardship spawned brilliant music-but at first, very little of it was street rap. Kendrick Lamar, the most critically celebrated artist of this decade, was able to use the city’s name as shorthand for an entire lineage that rap fans have internalized. Today, the mere mention of Compton carries staggering moral and narrative weight in hip-hop. But it’s just as fascinating when read as an act of synthesis. Straight Outta Compton is easily reduced into a couple of key mission statements, sure- fuck the police jumps to mind. It was also the product of bold, brazen boardroom maneuvering, and of glossy, decidedly grown-up disco clubs. What Eazy was forgetting (or conveniently omitting) is that that had always been the group’s strength: N.W.A wasn’t just the product of America’s malignant racism and California’s craven justice system. Dre diss from 1993 –– the group’s founder was mocking its producer for having adopted N.W.A’s ruthless, relentless street image relatively late in life. When one of those intrasquad feuds reached a fever pitch-with “Real Muthaphuckkin G’s,” Eazy-E’s scorched-Earth Dr. Yet while Straight Outta Compton has been accurately placed in hip-hop history (and in the flow chart of American pop culture at the end of the 80s), it’s never been properly understood as an inflection point in the musical history of Los Angeles County.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |