8th August - N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton

Artist – Album: N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton

Released: 8^th August 1988

Sounds Like: Crompton's Most Wanted

N.W.A may have courted controversy as a matter of course, releasing the firebrand single ‘Fuck tha Police’ and generally populating their music with vibrant profanities and tales of guns and hoes and rock and roll, but in truth they were a lot less humourless than their gangsta rap contemporaries such as Public Enemy. They were angry young men undoubtedly, and they showed as much on the likes opening trio of ‘Straight Outta Compton’, the aforementioned ‘Fuck tha Police’ and ‘Gangsta Gangsta’ which squared on fakers, the boys in blue and the obscene level of violence in the South Central L.A. in the late of Eighties. Ice Cube channelled this passion in a phenomenal performance in the 1991’s powerful drama Boyz n the Hood.

But what truly separated N.W.A from their peers were their lighter touches. Where Public Enemy assaulted the senses, N.W.A’s funky approach had you nodding along like the dog from Churchill. Dr Dre and DJ Yella formed a production team that has rarely been bettered in the history of hip hop, and Ice Cube plied their grooves with greatly fluid flows. Album closer ‘Something 2 Dance 2’ experiments with danceable templates, whilst ‘I Ain’t the 1’ hilariously runs the rule on gold diggers. They knowingly produced their most accessible single yet in the commercially-minded-rappers-skewering ‘Express Yourself’. Funky, fulfilling, influential stuff.

 

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1.       Straight Outta Compton – 4:19

2.       Fuck tha Police – 5:45

3.       Gangsta Gangsta – 5:36

4.       If It Ain’t Ruff – 3:34

5.       Parental Discretion Iz Advised – 5:16

6.       8 Ball – 4:52

7.       Something Like That – 3:35

8.       Express Yourself – 4:25

9.       Compton’s N the House – 5:20

10.   I Ain’t tha 1 – 4:54

11.   Dope Man – 5:20

12.   Quiet on tha Set – 3:59

13.   Something 2 Dance 2 – 3:22

Listen to ‘Express Yourself’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u31FO_4d9TY

Also released on the 8^th August:

2007: M.I.A. – Kala