It Sure Is Revisionist, But ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Is Still Worth Watching
In part because it will force Hollywood to acknowledge that people want hip hop biopics just as much as rock ones.
I need to qualify something before I begin this piece: I’m just happy that this movie even exists.
Admittedly that’s not a great position to be in when reviewing a film, because whatever faults you find can be easily justified via an ‘any visibility is good visibility!’ line of reasoning. In this case, though, that argument is neither true, nor why I’m happy that F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton exists; instead, it’s because now Hollywood has to acknowledge that people want to see hip hop biopics just as much as rock biopics.
This seems obvious, but let’s look at hip hop’s current standing in pop culture. The Grammy’s still don’t really know what to do with hip hop and R&B – and they didn’t even bothering to telecast the award for Best Hip Hop Album this year. Even at this week’s VMAs, the two biggest stories were African American artists pointing out the structural racism that dogs pop music and being labeled as aggressive, while a white girl bounced around in fake dreadlocks using racially charged language like “mammy”.
The mainstreaming of hip hop as the dominant pop music of the last 20 years has birthed a strange climate where African American culture is simultaneously celebrated and wrongly appropriated. We know that Beyonce is the biggest pop star in the world, but she isn’t always recognised as so at award ceremonies — particularly when she’s up against Taylor Swift. Rap music is still often strangely maligned as a novelty without substance at best, and dangerous at worst. Erasure runs deep.
So with the success of Straight Outta Compton (it’s now the highest earning music biopic in history), it’s nice that a story about the artistry and historical significance of a real hip hop moment is being considered as ‘legitimate’ enough to warrant something other than a Lifetime movie or a very loose autobiographical vehicle for Eminem to promote a new album. Celebrating the evolution of socially conscious rap is just as valuable culturally as telling the story of how Johnny Cash wrote ‘Folsom Prison Blues’.
By the way? It’s pretty good.
“This Rap Nonsense Will Never Catch On!”
Straight Outta Compton is about the Compton, California formation of N.W.A: pioneers of West Coast rap, and one of the most influential rap groups in history. For casual hip hop fans, N.W.A was the group who made Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E famous. They also popularised a harder, ‘gangster’ style of rap during a period when slow jams and party tunes were the dominant styles in hip hop.
This is why in the film, every ten minutes someone feels compelled to tell them, “This rap is too hard; you’ll never be successful!” Haha, the past.
The film begins in 1986 when Ice Cube (played by Ice Cube’s actual son O’Shea Jackson, Jr., who is HIS EXACT DOUBLE), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and DJ Yella (Neil Brown, Jr.) are just young men teaching themselves how to rap, and trying to avoid trouble with police and neighbourhood gangs. After their first single ‘Boyz In Da Hood’ – which came before the Ice Cube-starring film – gets radio play, Eazy-E meets music manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti in a wig) and N.W.A starts to gain momentum. The film follows N.W.A’s rise to popularity, the subsequent backlash against their graphically violent lyrics, and the splintering of the group at the height of their popularity once Ice Cube accuses Eazy and Jerry of mismanaging their money, and Dr. Dre meets an entrepreneurial young fellow called Suge Knight: a former bodyguard turned producer, with whom Dre begins West Coast label Death Row Records.
Straight Outta Compton mainly follows Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E’s specific creative processes, and their sense of conflict when choosing between career advancement and friendship. The film shifts from N.W.A vs. The World, to N.W.A vs. Each Other, to N.W.A: Where Are They Now?, time-jumping over the space of ten years. Even though I was sometimes puzzled by how it was weighted – with innocuous scenes that led nowhere, taking up airtime that could have been given to some pivotal moments that I’ll get into later – it marks the passing of time quite effectively.
But like all music biopics, it does fall victim to the occasional cheeseball moment — a necessary consequence of giving too much exposition about the birth of any famous pop culture thing. For instance: when Jerry gets some of his record company buds to see N.W.A perform, one middle-aged suit remarks that they’ll never be profitable. “Call me when you find the next Bon Jovi!” he says, and we’re all meant to laugh because it’s almost the ’90s, and hip hop is more profitable in the ’90s than Jon Bon Jovi rip-offs. Geddit? Ice Cube is tapping away at his computer in the early ‘90s, chucking to himself, and his wife asks, “How’s Friday coming?” Because Ice Cube wrote and starred in Friday, geddit geddit?? (If you’re writing a script does the title come first? Everything is confusing.)
Almost every music biopic is guilty of this ‘wink wink, nudge nudge’ stuff, and it’s admittedly cute at times. When you cast actors to play icons like Tupac and Snoop Dogg, it’s always going to be weird – so the best thing you can do is make a joke out of it. (Also, a warning to the N.W.A fans without giving anything away: there is a prolonged coughing jag in this film that will probably drive you crazy.)
The Revisionary Weirdness Of All Biopics
Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy-E’s wife are all producers of Straight Outta Compton, so what we’re getting is the story that they specifically want to tell. This isn’t new — Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs was a producer on 2009’s Biggie Smalls biopic Notorious — but given the omissions from the film, it is certainly worth noting.
Earlier in the week, Junkee’s Simon Miraudo discussed Dr. Dre’s history of violently assaulting women, one of them being journalist Dee Dee Barnes who publicly questioned the film for neglecting to include the infamous attack. This is particularly notable because F. Gary Gray actually worked with Barnes at the time of the assault, as a camera man for Pump It Up!. Its exclusion was very deliberate.
In Straight Outta Compton there is no ambiguity: we are told that Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy-E are thoughtful young men who try to avoid trouble (except when it violates their civil liberties), enjoy partying with topless women, and then later settle down with ‘nice’ girls who always wear tops.
Even if you ignored the absence of Dr. Dre’s violence against women, which he recently apologised for (just as Compton was gaining momentum, coincidentally…), it seems weird that Straight Outta Compton doesn’t trust itself to include both the good and bad aspects of N.W.A’s history — particularly when the issue of censorship comes up so much in the film. It’s easy to be revisionist when telling your own story, which is perhaps why there’s a scene in Straight Outta Compton that allows N.W.A to defend the violence inherent in their music. The film does a lot to counter the ‘angry black man’ narrative that still runs rampant every time Kanye West gives an impassioned speech, but the misogyny of their lyrics is never mentioned.
Occasionally, this revisionism becomes amusing. Suge Knight — who in hip hop folklore is known as something of a supervillian; a man who maybe killed Tupac and also, maybe killed Biggie Smalls and by the by, is in jail this very second for killing someone on the set of this goddamn movie — is made out to be the devil incarnate. Forget the fact that he’s always dressed in a red suit (that may just be a Crip thing); in almost every scene Suge seems to have these intense, unblinking staring contests with everyone he meets like he’s considering if he wants to kill them or not. He runs dog fights at Death Row Records and beats up dudes who park in his spot, to the horror of Dr. Dre — and hell, even Snoop Dogg doesn’t like him! But if Suge Knight was just as obviously evil in the early ‘90s as Straight Outta Compton depicts, then there is NO WAY anyone would have engaged him in a conversation, let alone started a record label with him.
In Spite Of All That, Why Does Straight Outta Compton Work?
While I think it’s important to note what Straight Outta Compton leaves out, it’s also important to talk about what it does right. All the lead actors are good, but O’Shea Jackson, Jr’s performance, as a talented but frustrated young man who is desperate for a little autonomy, stands out in particular. As is on brand, Paul Giamatti is also great, turning a character who on paper seems outright shady and manipulative into someone whose motives are a little more ambiguous.
The parallels Straight Outta Compton draws between the unchanging nature of police brutality and race relations in America is a consistent thread throughout the film. There are more than five scenes depicting policemen suspiciously rounding on any group of African American men who seem to be idly standing around in public. The famous footage of Rodney King being beaten by L.A police officers is shown multiple times throughout the film, and after the perpetrators are acquitted and the L.A Riots of 1992 begin, Ice Cube slowly drives through the city and watches the ensuing chaos.
While standing outside the recording studio after their first session, the five band members are questioned by police and then forced to lay on the ground, while Jerry stands beside them gob smacked at how they’re being treated. This scene could have so easily slipped into a white saviour sinkhole, but Jerry’s absolute fury and powerlessness gives it some nuance. Ice Cube, shaking with anger, stomps inside and a few minutes later tells the rest of the band that he just wrote a new song: it’s called ‘Fuck Da Police’!
Okay okay, it’s biopic cheeseball, but in this case it’s also kind of cathartic.
Despite its flaws, Straight Outta Compton is a nice reminder that in many ways hip hop is the punk music of our time. I can’t imagine what it’s like to watch the film as an OG N.W.A fan, but as someone who discovered them way after their prime, it is exciting to see how such a seminal album was born and think about how many rappers they’ve influenced since. (And if you don’t get that bit don’t worry: they will remind you during the credits). As a portrayal of N.W.A, I feel like Straight Outta Compton should have let itself paint a more complicated picture of these men – we can take it! But as a film on the whole, I hope it sparks a cultural shift in what Hollywood considers to be important musical legacies that are worth preserving.
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Straight Outta Compton is in cinemas now.
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Sinead Stubbins is a writer from Melbourne who has done stuff for Yen, frankie, Smith Journal and Elle. She tweets about Drake, Gilmore Girls and cheeseburgers at @sineadstubbins