By Paul Thompson • Aug 8 2018, 11:09pm

After the smoke cleared—after the threatening letters from the FBI, after the police skirmishes at tour dates, after the millions of dollars were cashed and after MTV buckled under the weight of street knowledge—the principals were at each other’s throats. N.W.A, one of the most creatively and commercially important groups in all of rap’s history, couldn’t stay together to properly follow up their masterpiece. And so Straight Outta Compton, the LP that shifted the balance of power West, away from New York, and Trojan Horsed gangsta rap into suburban homes around the country, stands as the only dispatch from the full group at the height of its powers. The album has been studied and dissected and formatted for cinema screens; it’s been sampled and rehashed and stripped for parts—even becoming fodder for later feuds between group members.

Yet while Straight Outta Compton has been accurately placed in hip-hop history (and in the flow chart of American pop culture at the end of the 80s), it’s never been properly understood as an inflection point in the musical history of Los Angeles County. When one of those intrasquad feuds reached a fever pitch—with “Real Muthaphuckkin G’s,” Eazy-E’s scorched-Earth Dr. Dre diss from 1993 –– the group’s founder was mocking its producer for having adopted N.W.A’s ruthless, relentless street image relatively late in life. What Eazy was forgetting (or conveniently omitting) is that that had always been the group’s strength: N.W.A wasn’t just the product of America’s malignant racism and California’s craven justice system. It was also the product of bold, brazen boardroom maneuvering, and of glossy, decidedly grown-up disco clubs. Straight Outta Compton is easily reduced into a couple of key mission statements, sure—fuck the police jumps to mind. But it’s just as fascinating when read as an act of synthesis.

READ THE REST AT VICE