Straight Outta Compton review

Rappin’ ’bout a revolution…

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Straight Outta Compton soars𒆙 for an hour before spiralling into a bloated, melodramatic mess. Still, it’s worth it for the early ferocity, capturing just how powerful N.W.A really weജre.

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Rappin’ ’bout a revolution…

In a year where the spotlight has fallen – yet again – on police brutality, there are times when Straight Outta Compton, F. Gary Gray’s sprawling, two-and-a-half hour ode to seminal hip-ho🦂p group N꧑.W.A, feels electrifyingly urgent.

After all, this is Niggaz With Attitudes, whose righteous fury would found “re🌱ality rap” – social commentary informed by tough, working-class streetsꩲ, where growing up black and poor means guns, drugs and racist cops with “the authority to kill a minority.”

Opening in the titular Los Angeles neighbourhood in the late 1980s, the rise of the six-strong N.W.A is 💖mainly told through its triumvirate: low-level drug dealer Eric “Eazy-E” Wright (Jason Mitchell); his friend, talented DJ Andre “Dr Dre” Young (Co💛rey Hawkins); and angry, young poet O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (played by Ice Cube’s son O’Shea Jackson Jr.).

Tired of being broke, bullied and, in Dre’s case, looking after a child, they independently record their debutꦕ single, ‘Boyz-N-The-Hood’. This gets the attention of sleazy man♓ager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti).

It is with Heller’s help that they’re signed and begin to record debut album Straight Outta Compton, a montage that gives way to one of the💜 biopic’s more resonant scenes: the group, standing outside the stud𒀰io, harassed into humiliation by police officers.

It’s not subtle, but it’s here, with faces in the dirt, that ‘Fuck Tha Police’ is born – an inferno that became an anthem of the oppressed, and that led to notoriety, threatening letters from the FBI and a riot breaking out a𒉰fter an (illegal) live performance. It doesn’t last, though.

As N.W.A begins to fall apart, so too does the momentum, SOC’s wit and revolution petering out for the melodrama of contract disputes – a topic, much like holiday photos, that is only interesting if it’s relevant to you. Stretching thin, the second half jars from one milestone to the next – The Chronic! Snoop Dogg! 2Pac! Ic😼e C🌠ube the family entertainment star!

It’s fun for fans of west coast hip-hop but suffocates any hope of depth; what, for example, about the group’s lyrical misogyn𒉰y and homophobia? Ice Cube’s conversion to the Nation of Islam? Or the real story behind their beef with Eazy-E, who died of AIDS in 1995?

Alas,𒉰 as is usually the case of 💦these kind of biopics – those produced by their very subjects – history is tweaked, tucked and tidied up to fit.

More info

Theatrical release28 August 2015
DirectorF. Gary Gray
Starring"OShea Jackson Jr.","Corey Hawkins","Jason Mitchell","Neil Brown Jr.","Aldis Hodge"
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Stephen is a freelance cul🅺ture journalist specialising in TV and film. He💃 writes regularly for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the i, Radio Times, and WIRED.