The film Straight Outta Compton suggests that the emergence and success of the rap group NWA was a triumph of freedom of expression. What the film really shows is a moral nihilism and a false narrative about law enforcement. Dr. Dre and Easy E were very talented to be sure. Their charisma and musical ability is captured in the film; especially by Jason Mitchell as Easy-E. But was NWA a net-positive for American culture?

Pushing the Limits

Would NWA even be controversial in 2023? The group’s song “Fuck Da Police,” for example, prompted a letter from the FBI. Would the equivalent of NWA, BLM basically, provoke a warning from the FBI? Hardly, instead FBI agents kneeled for BLM. So in that sense, we have regressed as a society, in that we don’t fight indecency–or more precisely, indecency is not even a concept anymore.

In Straight Outta Compton, the police and FBI at the time see themselves as holding up a certain line of standards and decorum that now seems quaint. We can hardly imagine any institution doing so nowadays, lest they would be branded as conservative reactionaries and probably racist too.

Jerry Heller 

The group’s manager Jerry Heller, played by the great Paul Giamatti, makes frequent reference to the Constitution and what is legal when defending the group against censorship or arrest. Yet one gets the impression that Heller was more interested in using the law to create a more permissive society (and making money) rather than truly adhering to the spirit of the 1st Amendment. Ironically, it’s Heller who is exploiting the group financially rather than acting as their advocate. As Ice Cube later rapped of Heller in his solo career on a rather crude song “No Vaseline” (1991), also on Priority Records: 

“It’s a case of divide and conquer 
Cuz you let a Jew break up my crew.” 

Ice Cube explains in an interview that he doesn’t have a big problem with Jerry Heller, and that the film isn’t really meant to settle a personal score with him:  

“We was totally fair with Jerry, and I don’t really have any ax to grind with that guy at all…I just didn’t like how that guy dealt with us internally, and that was my problem with it.  It was strictly business.” 

In the film, Heller then refers to Ice Cube as an “antisemitic piece of shit” and contemplates suing him for defamation or sicking the JDL on him–to which Easy-E responds, hilariously: 

“Jerry, you got to relax.  Niggas don’t even know what “antisemitic” means anyway. This is a battle rap.” 

From there, Ice Cube experiences a backlash in the press that calls to mind Kanye West (who arguably went a little further than Ice Cube in his antisemetic statements). 

In a New York Times review of Straight Outta Compton, Heller is described as representing “every white hustler who has ever skimmed off the top of black talent.” Of course, this conveniently leaves off a key part of Heller’s identity, and that of many other handlers and managers in the music industry. In that same review, film critic Manohla Margis (a liberal white lady of course) prattles on that “black lives are at stake” in response to the violence in the film’s opening scene. Yes, but who is putting those black lives in jeopardy? It’s literally gang warfare.  This she also conveniently leaves out. 

And if Ice Cube and NWA really were screwed by Jerry Heller and Priority Records, that proves that the people who are unscrupulous enough to promote NWA also didn’t have enough honor to deal with them fairly and compensate them for their work, which to be fair they did deserve. I actually don’t find it hard to believe that Ice Cube was screwed by these guys. 

Racist Police? 

If we are to take Straight Outta Compton at face value, we would assume that the LA police in the 80s were among the most unreasonable, racist psychopaths to have worn the badge. What’s missing is a couple factors: What provoked the police in the first place? Rampant crime in the very communities that would decry police being too rough. This is not to justify any police abuse against innocent black people if that indeed occurred but rather to give a little context.  

Easy E literally was a crack dealer, this was part of his mythos.  So if the police profiled him and his associates as criminals, they weren’t really too wide off the mark. Another scene shows the members of NWA pointing weapons at a disgruntled boyfriend of one of their groupies who banged on their hotel door with a gun. So if there was a perception among the police that NWA were not actually artists but rather criminals, they weren’t too far off the mark either–at least according to the film itself. 

When the group decides to cynically use the letter from the FBI as a publicity stunt, their manager Jerry Heller reluctantly goes along with it. This raises the question: Was it really a principled battle for free speech, or was it all to sell more records?  If it was merely for sales, then perhaps the culture itself paid the price. 

So Straight Outta Compton at times makes a point that I don’t think it wants to make, but it can’t help make.  This is to say that it portrays a community that is violent without the intervention of police. For example, Dr. Dre shares the news of his little brother’s death to the group: 

“He got into a fight and some motherfucker broke his neck. It’s my little brother, man.” 

Did the police cause some guy to break his little brother’s neck in a fight? It merely hints at the conditions in Compton at that time. The problem with the moral message of the film is that on one hand it seeks to glorify the violence of NWA and their community, but in the next breath complains of being victimized by the police for no reason. Juxtaposed against the Rodney King beating is Suge Knight’s violence against anyone he crosses paths with–I believe the film means to make that point. So NWA and their retinue were not merely the victims but violence, but in some cases, at least by proxy, the perpetrators of violence. 

As events unfold in the film, the police are obviously the villains. But if you read between the lines, you suspect that this is not exactly how it went down. 

Let’s take a look at the first verse of Straight Outta Compton (the song, that is): 

What we have here is not a righteous message against an oppressive system. Instead, it’s heedless, amoral promotion of senseless violence. It’s a cliche to point this out, as many adults in the room did at the time, but it bears repeating now that we have the film to represent events for history.  The idea that the police and FBI were curtailing NWA’s freedom of speech, or that they were mischaracterized as being thugs tends to be contradicted by the group’s own lyrical content and behavior in real life. If anything, the police and NWA had a kind of dialectic; NWA needed the police in a cat and mouse game which they portrayed in their music and their videos. 

And as the film itself portrays, the behavior of the guys making up NWA was self-destructive enough without anyone else trying to sabotage them. 

A Personal Admission and Conclusion 

Finally, in the interests of avoiding hypocrisy, I have to admit that I was a big Easy-E fan as an adolescent, though I’m not sure that was a great choice to make. He’s a great rapper as far as the genre goes. The guys from NWA, from Easy E, Dr. Dre, to Ice Cube, are all kind of special people, and the celebrity which they gained is like that of outlaws. We might regard them as antiheros. But they’re not heroes, however Straight Outta Compton might seek to portray them. 

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