I realize I’m at an age where I have some history behind me; whether the history be bad or good, it happened, and a big part of you knows and understands that it’s never coming back. Hip-hop has changed, reality has change, but as much as all this change is occurring, so much of the bigger picture, the world and the hood are remaining the same. To me, this movie captured #blacklives matter like no hash tag ever will.
Please understand that I am, have been, and always will be a huge Ice Cube fan. Like the movie said, it began with Eazy, it began with NWA, it began with Boyz-N-The-Hood, Gangsta Gangsta, and of course Fuck the Police. There’s a clip that’s widespread of Cube being on the bus and somebody referring to him as a poet—that’s real, he’s a fuckin’ poet, whenever you get through. In that mindset, understand the times, then and now. Now we have Sandra Clark, Treyvonne, and Missouri; yesteryear it was Rodney King, police brutality, and free speech. Poets have spoke on these issues yesteryear, this year, last year, and unfortunately or not next year, because you best believe, unfair racially charged situations will always occur.
NWA is hip-hop. NWA is hip-hop. NWA is hip-hop. You can call it gansta rap, you can call it reality rap, but in the end it will be placed on the same shelf next to KRS-1, Run DMC, Slick Rick, Rakim, and all the other classic Artist who helped bring this art-form…form. Watching this movie was like a history lesson of times gone by through music, through experience…it was not some after school show! Music has been and always will be a huge part of the black experience, this movie deserves to be included in that experience, in that history—because this shit happened.
Fuck you if you feel like I’m jumpin’ all over the place, but that’s just where I am right now…in any case, this movie was about friendship as well. And it showed the most unlikely of friendships. NWA was, is, and are, a bunch of hood niggas. And no or sees a hood nigga as being human. amerikkka has always portrayed Black males as inhuman, and to a certain extent, NWA personified this more than most. This movie made a big attempt to balance that, to show the humanness of Black males, of hood niggaz, of my generation of Black men. I watched this movie, bobbed my head to the tracks, lipped the lyrics, and rapped along with them as well as everyone else in the theatre; yet I’m not sure if everyone else was thinking of their time growing up with their friends, their patnas, their homies…but I was. I thought of the time I was in 6th grade with a boom box bumpin the NWA tape on it, I thought of the many 3-way conversations my homies and I had back in jr. high about who was the best lyricist, and I thought about being in college, waitin’ on Tupac’s double cd to come out while I was bumpin’ Snoop, Dre, and Cube in the dorm room.
Cube and Dre (and Tamika) couldn’t go wrong with this movie, period point blank. They did a great job in documenting the history; the riots, the concerts, the police brutality—all that. One of the things I appreciate the most about this film, is it from the perspective of Black males of my generation. My big homie T, and I agree that Black men are the pit bulls of society. This means we protect, we do it with force, we don’t apologize, we are loyal, we are loveable—but amerikkka has never and will appreciate it. So I take this moment to appreciate Straight Outta Compton, and appreciate NWA—MC Wren, DJ Yella, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and of course my nigga Eazy E!
#fuckthapolice
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