The FBI sent a warning letter to N.W.A about “Fuck tha Police”, which the musicians adroitly used to generate free publicity (the G-Men’s original letter is currently exhibited at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). The insolent, raucous lyrics and denouncing of what N.W.A viewed as police state tactics by an occupying army in the ghettos led to a crackdown on the group as they reached fame. The tune’s title is also its refrain, which is defiantly, exultantly repeated, as well as lyrics expressing their angst at being constantly subjected to police harassment: “Fuckin with me ’cause I’m a teenagerWith a little bit of gold and a pagerSearchin my car, lookin for the productThinkin every nigga is sellin narcotics.” The film clearly shows how these embittering experiences led to the creation of what is arguably N.W.A’s signature song, “Fuck tha Police”, which appeared on their 1988 debut album also called “Straight Outta Compton.” The song’s lyrics cleverly invoke a courtroom setting where N.W.A places the police on trial. They are slammed up against the hoods of vehicles, forced to lie down on the streets and otherwise roughed up by the “pigs” for doing absolutely nothing - other than being Black at the wrong time and in the wrong place (i.e., contemporary racist America). Dre (Corey Hawkins), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) and other N.W.A members in their South Central Los Angeles neighborhood and beyond, before and after they attain national notoriety as a seminal gangsta rap group. Gary Gray (1995’s “Be Cool” with John Travolta and The Rock) and co-written by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, illustrates how police routinely roust and abuse Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr., who - in a remarkable bit of casting is actually Cube’s son and bears a remarkable resemblance to his father), Dr. The movie version of “Straight Outta Compton”, directed by F. The movie, a biopic named after the album of the same name by N.W.A, or Niggaz Wit Attitudes, portrays the gangsta rappers who exploded out of L.A.’s “’hood” in the 1980s to denounce excessive use of force by the police. This week also marks the one-year anniversary of the LAPD’s shooting of mentally ill Ezell Ford and the beating death of Omar Abrego, plus the fiftieth anniversary of the 1965 Watts riot. Straight Outa Compton hits theaters on August 14, during the ongoing state of emergency in Ferguson on the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown.
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