Dwight Yoakam and Terence Trent D’arby are sandwiched between two giants of late Eighties hip-hop on this list. Public Enemy on one side, NWA on the other, and NWA are inarguably the harder-hitting and more aggressive sound, the birth of “gangsta”. Within the space of a minute of the first track, Straight Outta Compton, I think we’ve had more f-bombs than the entirely of all the albums to date, and it doesn’t let up.
Ice Cube is the main rapper, Dr Dre is on here with a mix of rapping and programming; other members of NWA are Eazy-E and MC Ren on rapping, with Arabian Prince performing the same mix as Dre, and DJ Yella doing turntable duty. As with other hip-hop, it’s all a mix of programmed samples and drum patterns, the “live” portion provided by the vocals and the turntable elements.
There’s a great deal of anger and swagger in the tracks. The classic “Fuck Tha Police” is an expletive laden tirade against racist policing (and the perceived race traitors of black police officers), and throughout there are threats of gun violence towards police and rivals, and lashings of misogyny. In that sense, it’s not a million miles from the likes of AC/DC and other metal bands, except that the rhetoric is harder and stronger. There’s a difference between “babe” and “bitch”.
As with some of the metal albums, though, one wonders how reflective this truly is of life, or if it’s painting a darker and more violent view of the average Urban Black American. Looking at earlier albums highlighting social injustice, from Stevie Wonder, War, Sly Stone and others, the systemic racism is a running theme, what seems to have changed is that the anger has boiled over into a rage; polite protests are no longer good enough, NWA propose violence as the answer.
The anger is kind of front-loaded on the album, however. Later tracks tend more to the typical hip-hop bragging and dissing tracks (although with characteristic robustness here as well), except for the later track Dopeman which, although it highlights how dealing crack (“slinging ‘caine”) can lead to riches and girls, you’re a fool if you take drugs and you’re a bad person if you sell them, the track ending with the promise that
“Yo, Mister dope man, you think you're slick
You sold crack to my sister and now she's sick
But if she happens to die because of your drug
I'm putting in your culo a .38 slug”
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