Straight Outta Compton

Better than Coldplay

This album has a really good sound. Was thinking I'd rate it a 4 at the beginning but because of the offensive and unlistenable lyrics at times I'll compromise at 3

For most of this album I thought it was gonna be a definite 5 star. Up until Express Yourself I was loving it. Unfortunately it dropped off a good bit after that. Dopeman in particular I really didn’t care for.

Top Track - Something Like That

I’ll always love NWA because I’ll always hate cops. That being said, Ice Cube is clearly the weakest of the bunch.

I guess one of the first proper rap albums.

Wowzers. I see why Dionne Warwick called that meeting. Shit bumps tho 🤷🏾

En Tidal falta la canción 2: Fuck tha police.1. Me encanta como suena el rap de esta época. Me he guardado: «Straight Outta Compton», «Fuck tha Police», «Gangsta Gangsta», «Parental Discretion Iz Advised» y «Dopeman», pero podrían ser más. Me han entrado ganas de ver la película.

Looking back it’s so funny how the 808s contrasted the subject manner. This album really set the popular blueprint for the next two decades. (4-4.5)

Me, thinking: Didn't we have this one already? Wait no, that was the movie. I watched the movie.

One thing this album did for me personally was make going to [city of] Compton more exciting. 1988 is downright ancient in hip hop years so I know this was an influential album. But also, some of that influence was negative - the lyrics are the usual violent misogynistic stuff I now expect from popular rap, slurs included (slur count = 75). The prosody and general vibe is impactful and cool, so if those two things could be decoupled (as they of course are in rare cases) that'd be a little music utopia. But so it goes.

Can't escape the Beastie Boys: the "yeah" in "We don't 'just say no' / we're too busy saying 'Yeah!'" is a Beasties sample.

Linguistic intrigue: in 'Fuck tha Police', Ice Cube says he's "brown", which I feel like is now usually used for non-white non-black people, and I wonder if that didn't use to be the case. Also, you know how old-timey insults just read as cutesy and quaint? I'm getting that vibe from "I ain't the one / the one to get played like a pooh butt". I *think* it's intentional, but either way it made me lol.

Highlight: 'Express Yourself'

Oh boy am I excited!! What an album, what a collection of talent as well.

Fucking depressing how relevant this album still is. Fuck the police

Classic …and long.

Is ti the best rap album of all time? Probably not, but there's an argument to be made that it's the most influential rap album of all time.

For the most part, this album doesn't sound nearly as dated as other albums from this era. That speaks both to how forward-thinking this album was at the time, and how influential it was, since the next 30+ years of rap has its fingerprints all over it.

There are a couple songs that don't hold up, but overall, this is probably the album most responsible for catapulting rap into the mainstream. 4.5 stars.

N.W.A. are among the most important pioneers of gangsta rap and certainly deserve respect as such. However, their debut album *Straight Outta Compton* is so raw and unvarying that I find it hard to write anything positive about it. I now have a reasonable understanding of what rap must have meant to people of color in its early days. For me, though, rap tracks remain largely songs for people who don’t like music. But I do like music.

I don’t like the genre that Straight Outta Compton spawned, but I can’t deny that there’s an incredible energy behind this album and it actually feels important. I do have a lot of the same complaints about this one as I do with the rest of the gangsta rap albums I’ve had generated so far, but I enjoyed this one.

Fav Songs: Straight Outta Compton, Fuck Tha Police, Gangsta Gangsta, Parental Discretion Iz Advised

Least Fav: Compton's N The House - Remix

7.2/10

This was a huge album for teenage me, even as a white kid in Australia. Grabbed a lot of attention with 'Fuck Tha Police', but there was plenty else to back it up, they weren't one trick ponies.
'Express Yourself' remains one of my favourite hiphop tracks to this day, and the early production of Dre shows why he became such a huge force in the 1990s. Some of the lyrics and themes do sound a bit dated today, but this was nearly 40 years ago now, and there is universal themes that are easily relatable today elsewhere.

How much of this was reality in 1980s Compton and how much is young bloke's chest thumping, peacocking boast is not for this 69yo White, middle class Australian to say. But it does seem to be the sort of record you might expect from a minority that's had enough of being discriminated against, profiled, disenfranchised and scapegoated.

"TIME TO PUT COMPTON ON THE MAP" and they're going to make you listen until you know the truth. (Or at least, their version of it)

And if the level of violence, misogyny and drug use is pretty confronting, perhaps life in Compton was just as confrontational.

Public Enemy is probably more sophisticated in their ideas, but this is pretty raw and angry.

Obviously important, if problematic.

I enjoyed this despite the sometimes infantile lyrics

Powerhouse.