https://twitter.com/thablogmother/status/630172452551667713
https://twitter.com/thablogmother/status/630174680880541696
I put a pause button on this part of the story because I’ve been waiting on Dre and Cube (mainly) to get the floor to be able to speak on the part of the movie that (no matter how excited we are for its arrival) the humble beginnings that stung a few people were inevitably going come back to surface.
As you see, the blogger who spoke out at Oprah Winfrey’s expressing what a great movie Straight Outta Compton was remembered all too well-the life that the guys of N.W.A were living (while living as N.W.A hailing straight out of Compton).
It’s a double edge sword in rap that you are expected to rap the truth conducive to your existence (past, present or current) without embellishing or lying.
But what happens if the life you live involved the same drug dealing, street crimes, and ‘hos’ you rap about? Well, you tell that too. And that’s exactly what N.W.A did.
You see the thing about rap music is that it’s poetry to music but delivered as a song. As sweet as that sounds, the flip side to that is that there aren’t many sonnets and soliloquies deliverable from the mouths of any rap babe in the 40+ years the genre has been in existence as, rap is , and always has been the song of the streets laid over a hot beat that unfortunately; came packaged and shrink-wrapped like suffocated silver-spoon dreams. And the only way to tell their (any rapper/rap group) story was to rap about it.
The unfortunate thing about rap is that alongside its stereotype, it comes with a “type:”
- male-dominated, and over-populated with female groupies-elated. Period.
And with that comes, more testosterone-fueled lyrics to suit their experience (or experiences had for material to fuel lyrics)-either way, very few songs in rap talk about the “good girls” they encounter in life, which in turn puts them (and their music) in the hot seat with the good girls who are offended about the girls many of them rap about.
With the movie being out, knowing that unlike these documentaries:
https://youtu.be/lYXOAgO2U_A
https://youtu.be/aZPUn1_jj4A
…there would BE no explaining and confessionals in between scenes, that meant that Dr. Dre, Ice Cube (and any other surviving/interested parties and members of N.W.A) was going to have a lot of explaining to do about their pasts as (despite their lives, livings, and lifestyles having evolved); the people (women especially) haven’t forgotten [about their pasts-that includes “misogynistic” lyrics, and especially Dr. Dre’s physical violence on two women in particular that are on record and (as per rap history legend and ledger) having giving deets and G’s about.
Miche’le (as seen above on the Vlad interview), and the one (that you can’t find anywhere on the Internet): the situation with 90s rap journalist Dee Barnes in which Dre. jumped on her such that a lawsuit became of it.
Traces of it all-all went away (as did Dee Barnes) and although she didn’t die, it was as if after that settlement, she, her career, and nearly all traces of her disappeared as Dr. Dre’s career continued to be on the rise and his reputation being strictly about the business.
Then along came the official movie: Straight Outta Compton. And now, Dr. Dre’s got that explaining to do and well-he did.
#staytuned..I’m updating 🙂
