N.W.A - Straight Outta Compton (1988)

First off, that's a pretty badass album cover. Now, you might be saying to yourself "There's six guys on the album cover.. But five people in the movie! What happened?!" and the answer is just simply that N.W.A has worked with the government to successfully disintegrate Arabian Prince not only from a mainstream audience, but they REWROTE history itself! This serves as an extremely rare relic to prove that Arabian Prince existed at one point in some alternate galaxy... Incredible!

N.W.A consists of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince, who is mysteriously missing from the film "Straight Outta Compton", but then again, a lot of stuff is missing in that movie so it's almost no surprise, but I couldn't even find a picture of him with the group! Throughout the album, the lyrical content provided by these guys is pretty much just like what your parents stereotypically think hip-hop songs exclusively consist of, with drugs, bitches, and gang warfare.

See, from the opening of the title track with the loud drums, leading into three classic verses, by Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E respectively, to the fun Sunday School morning classic of "Fuck the Police", to the massively educational "Gangsta Gangsta", the album begins with an impressive three track run, that I think we all remember the album as being as a whole, but unfortunately, the album has a few blemishes that time has chosen to forget, due to them not being memorable. 

Before you hang me at the stake, let me ask you a question: Honestly, how often do YOU listen to "I Ain't Tha 1"? "8 Ball (Remix)"? There is a decent amount of filler that could've been trimmed from the album, but unless you have nostalgic feeling for the album, you're likely not to actually want to listen to every track in full. 

That being said, eight tracks into the album, "Express Yourself" kicks in and that song is great! I especially love how Dr. Dre raps about not smoking weed because of it supposedly causing brain damage, and then he became a major pothead just three years later with his album "The Chronic"! Now that's some funny shit!

Speaking of Dr. Dre, he along with DJ Yella produces the entire album, but it's not like much else of what he's produced. There's not too much of a G-Funk influence throughout the album, with the only notable instance I can think of being little bits of the track "Dopeman (Remix)" where it almost sounded like a song from "The Chronic", but then it turns into something like a lot of the other songs on the album: A loud drum loop with various sounds in the background.

Was the album influential? Holy shit, you bet your ass it was, and it should be respected for the great songs on it, but ultimately it's not that great past those four songs ("Straight Outta Compton", "Fuck the Police", "Gangsta Gangsta" and "Express Yourself") which are certified classics, but aside from those, despite some other tracks being mildly entertaining, such as "Quiet on tha Set", the album just doesn't get much play from me as a whole, despite me respecting it for what it is and what it did.

But who gives a shit about N.W.A when you can have the urban, ghetto sounds of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis instead?!

6/10  
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