Widely regarded as the greatest year in rap, 1988 saw albums from Public Enemy, Ice-T, MC Lyte, Big Daddy Kane, Eric B. and Rakim, Biz Markie, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince,1 Slick Rick, the Jungle Brothers, Run-DMC, Boogie Down Productions, EPMD, and more, and more, and more. What’s more: None of it was empty space. Each of them seemed to be marking something historical.
Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is one of rap’s most influential records, and when Rolling Stone wrote about it they said Chuck D “didn’t invent righteous belligerence, but he certainly got it on MTV,” and that’s just about the best way to talk about the album, too. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper helped frame up the walls that “wholesome rap” would eventually live safely inside of. Eric B. and Rakim’s Follow the Leader set Rakim on the path to become the first (and probably only) person to perfect rapping as a skill. EPMD’s Strictly Business all but copyrighted building tracks up from funk samples. MC Lyte’s Lyte as a Rock proved women were as capable as the men (and in a lot of cases more capable than the men). More and more and more.
And there, louder than all of them, more confrontational than all of them, more controversial than all of them—there was N.W.A.
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N.W.A was a gangsta rap group from Compton, California. They had a few different lineups, but the strongest version was the too-brief period when it was Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and Dr. Dre. That’s the core group behind Straight Outta Compton, which has become the most impactful album within the gangsta rap subgenre. N.W.A was substantial for a handful of reasons, but they all wiggle back to the same premise: They were the first rap group that America actively tried to ignore, and then eventually tried to stop.
They were railed on by politicians and members of the media. They were blocked from the radio and TV and banned from performing in certain cities. They were just too crude, too aggressive, too mean; these were the main complaints, at least. Even the cover of Straight Outta Compton, which was a photo of the group’s members gathered around looking down directly into the camera very much in a manner that seemed to represent that they were either going to shoot you (Eazy-E is aiming a revolver2) or had already shot you, was scary. And so they were bottlenecked.
The most famous example: In 1989, Milt Ahlerich, then an assistant director in the FBI, sent a letter to Priority Records, the label that was distributing Straight Outta Compton. He admonished them for doing so, saying that “Fuck Tha Police,” the album’s supercharged second song, was promoting violence against law enforcement officers. These actions, of course, all had the opposite effect of what was intended. The album’s popularity only grew.3
Straight Outta Compton was a rough-cut job—recording took six weeks and it was done on a budget of approximately $8,000—but that only seemed to confirm the rawness of the group. In less than two months, the album sold more than five hundred thousand copies, later topping the three-million-copies-sold mark following the buzz of media talking about how nobody should be talking about the group. It was the first time in history an album had gone platinum without being played on the radio.
In 1990, Ice-T was on The Oprah Winfrey Show. That particular episode was about censorship in music, and the panel was Ice-T; music critic Nelson George; Tipper Gore, who cofounded the Parents Music Resource Center, which aimed to put parental advisory stickers on music they deemed objectionable; a writer from the Washington Post named Juan Williams; Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who was there to talk about the defamation of Jewish people by musicians and the silence that came from record labels afterward; and Jello Biafra, a former lead singer of the punk rock band the Dead Kennedys, who’d been taken to court because of complaints about the DKs’ music by the PMRC. In the closing moments of the show, when things were properly exciting and people were talking over one another, Ice-T raised his voice a little louder than most and declared that he could neatly sum up the entire situation. Everyone went quiet to listen to him.
“The real problem here with the one side versus the other is not that my homeboys are hearing [this music],” he began. “If only my friends were hearing these records, nobody’d care. It’s that [affluent] kids are buying more rap records than our kids. And the white kids now from suburbia are listening to N.W.A and the parents don’t know what to do about it. If only the brothers in the neighborhood listened to it, nobody’d care. It’s rock and roll going into suburbia and it’s getting to his kid,” he said, pointing at a white man in the audience who earlier on had talked about the threat of rap music.
Straight Outta Compton was not the first gangsta rap record. But it was the one that fully bent the trajectory toward reporting the dejection and desolation of the inner cities of the country. And that meant it was no longer just for those populations anymore. Straight Outta Compton popularized gangsta rap in America. Ice-T advanced what Schoolly D had done and made gangsta rap a recognizable genre. N.W.A advanced what Ice-T had done and made it a threatening one.
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N.W.A was always a very serious group, or at least that’s what they purported to be. But there were certainly moments where their villainy contained at least a hint of goofiness to it. Sometimes it was sly, sometimes it was overt.
Example: The song “Fat Girl” is all about an overweight girl falling for Eazy-E. The two best lines: When she meets him and he raps, “She gave the grin, I showed the frown / And with a bear hug picked me off the ground.” And when he tries to run away from her and she follows, so he raps, “She kept on coming because of addiction / Legs on fire because of friction.” The song ends with him shooting her with a harpoon, which is not a thing that I recommend.
Another example: When they appeared on Arsenio Hall4 in 1990 and Eazy-E spent the whole interview wearing a hockey mask and loosened straitjacket and cleaning his fingernails with a knife while whispering things to MC Ren.
Sometimes N.W.A was ultra scary. Sometimes they were ultra not.
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Eazy-E was the most compelling figure in N.W.A.5 He was a short, loud, cartoonishly gangster former drug dealer with a voice that chirped in your ear like a very belligerent small bird. But he was not the best rapper in N.W.A. That was Ice Cube.
Ice Cube raps first on “Straight Outta Compton.” He has the best verse of the three (all three are good, his is just the best).
He talks about being crazy. His measurement is, he is as crazy as a “motherfucker,” as it were, and I didn’t check but that’s probably not the term a psychiatrist would use professionally to describe someone, even if that someone was, in fact, as crazy as a motherfucker.
He talks about shooting people, specifically with a sawed-off shotgun, which is somehow more intimidating than shooting people with basically any other gun. The only real exception would be an AK-47, an assault rifle especially popular with rappers and also members of the militia. Of course, later in his verse on “Straight Outta Compton” he talks about using one of those to shoot people, too, so I mean, I guess Ice Cube’s always been good at establishing and advancing his brand.
He talks about beating people up daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and I very much have to respect his dedication to punching people.
And he talks about cooking his enemies in a pot of gumbo. I’m almost certain he means this metaphorically, but he was one of the most menacing figures in rap for many years, so there’s a slight possibility he meant it literally.6
In 2014, Ice Cube was on Sesame Street. It was a two-minute segment where he did magic tricks while explaining to Elmo what the word “astounding” means. “Astounding is when something is soooo amazing, it catches you by surprise,” Cube said, wearing a long-sleeve, nonthreatening aqua-blue button-down shirt, shortly before making a baby dinosaur appear from a top hat.
I wish there was a way that 1988 Ice Cube could be introduced to 2014 Ice Cube. He would be as astounded as a motherfucker.
REBUTTAL: “CHILDREN’S STORY�
� SLICK RICK
This ain’t funny so don’t ya dare laugh: The most important rap song of 1988 was Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story.” What could be better than a chilling fable about crime and poverty delivered by an eye-patch-wearing Aesop with a British accent over a nursery-rhyme piano beat? Nuffin’—nuffin’ is cooler than that. Slick Rick the Ruler is the only one who could possibly put even a mild hurt on N.W.A. “Children’s Story” wasn’t the first storytelling rap, but it’s the first iconic one, and the one whose skeleton is always the easiest to see in the storytelling songs that have come after. (For obvious examples, see Mos Def’s version and Snoop’s “G Bedtime Stories.”) Don’t fight the Ruler—without him, without “Children’s Story,” none of this would even exist.
—MOLLY LAMBERT
N.W.A. Swear Words
Number of times each swear word is used on Straight Outta Compton
Fuck – 134
Motherfucker – 73
Bitch – 64
Shit – 54
Ass – 51
Nigga – 45
Dick – 12
Ho – 9
Pussy – 4
Goddamn – 3
Bullshit – 3
Hooker – 1
Prick – 1
Dyke – 1
Slut – 1
Balls – 1
Cum – 1
Fag – 1
1. The DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince album was called He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper. It was amazing. There was a song on it called “A Nightmare on My Street” and it was about Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street and that was the first time in my life pop culture had been folded over onto itself for me. Also, there was a song on there called “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” and I will always care about it deeply because in the second verse Fresh Prince says the word “hell,” and when I would rap along my parents would let me say it, and it really made me feel powerful. In that particular case, I suppose parents did understand.
2. This is a bigger deal than it seems. The year before, Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded became the first rap album to show a gun on the cover.
3. Also, both Dr. Dre and Ice Cube poked the FBI with sticks about it in songs afterward. (It might be more appropriate to say they poked them with dicks, as both Dre and Cube told the FBI to get off each one’s respective penis.)
4. The best part of researching for this book was that it gave me a reason to watch about twenty different episodes of The Arsenio Hall Show. I can’t think of a better argument for becoming a writer.
5. A neat thing: Eazy-E’s most iconic song, “Boyz-n-the Hood,” was originally made for a New York duo named HBO. Ice Cube had written it and Dr. Dre had produced the instrumental. HBO passed on it, though. Eazy decided to record the song himself because he’d already paid for the studio time where HBO was supposed to record. The whole situation would seem to be a metaphor for his whole existence.
6. I don’t want to know what human gumbo tastes like, but I also don’t not want to know what human gumbo tastes like, if that makes any sense.
WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT
It’s about fighting the power, and while “the power” is never specifically identified, we all understand it to mean anyone or anything in power who is wielding it unjustly.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
It gave a voice to the underrepresented, and positioned Public Enemy as the greatest political rap group of all time.
Public Enemy’s first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, came out in 1987, and almost immediately their thematic presentation of black militancy was invigorating and exciting. By their second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, they’d created a new style of song production that was super innovative and mesmerizing. It was this beautiful texture of samples woven together and looped ’round and ’round and ’round, sped up just enough to feel even more frenetic.1 It was really remarkable, and a thing that, save Bambaataa (see this page) and maybe a pinch of others, only the production duo the Bomb Squad was doing back then.
But Public Enemy was also philosophically overpowering. They rapped about impeaching the president (“Rebel Without a Pause”), the inevitability of time spent in incarceration for black men (“Bring the Noise”), metaphorically lynching critics (“Don’t Believe the Hype”), things like that. These were timely and important discussions—this was near the end of the ’80s, so there were of course racial tensions in the country,2 and there was also a general lack of black civil rights leadership—but Public Enemy was also seen as hyper-threatening, and, more troublesome to their purpose, hyper-exclusive.
“Fight the Power” carried the same fury as the seven singles they’d released before then, but it was also wider, more inclusive, and that made it more impactful. Public Enemy had always been expert hostage takers, particularly as policy and pathology related to blacks, but “Fight the Power” encouraged active participation from all listeners who felt listless, not just all black listeners who felt listless. It was the perfect measure of anger and insight, and in 1989, that’s exactly what rap music needed to be.
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In 1995, my friend Miguel and I had gone to the movies. We hadn’t gone with our parents because we were old enough to go alone (I was fourteen, he was fifteen). And we hadn’t gone with any girls because we didn’t want to pay for any girls’ tickets, but also because I’d not grown into my head yet so my body + head looked very much like a Blow Pop, and girls like Blow Pop the candy but not Blow Pop the human. So we were there at the movies on our own (hopefully watching something sophisticated like Sense and Sensibility or even something hip like Kids, but probably watching A Goofy Movie or Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls3).
After the movie let out, Miguel and I started walking the quarter mile or so back to the mall, which was where our ride was going to pick us up. To get there, you had to cross through the parking lot of this semi-populated business strip. As we walked, these two kids came into view. Miguel, unprovoked, hollered at them, because that’s the type of person he was.4 They turned back toward us, seemed to say something but it was inaudible, then turned back around and kept walking. Miguel became incensed. “Come on,” he barked, and then he sprinted off after them. I blindly followed behind him, because that’s the type of person I was.
When we got there, when we were close enough that we could see their eyes, Miguel shouted, “What the fuck? You want some shit?” And before anyone could say anything, he punched Guy A in the head. Me and Guy B, we just stood there. Miguel leaned back, punched Guy B, then turned back to Guy A. I was like, Oh, okay, I guess we’re just fighting these strangers now, and then tried to pretend like I knew what I was doing.5 This was a fight, but only in a loose application of the word. Miguel was the only one to get any actual shots in. Guy A just sort of rolled around hoping to avoid catastrophe, and me and Guy B mostly just hugged each other very aggressively for a bit. After, say, somewhere between about twenty-five seconds and two hours, someone came out saying something about the police and so we all separated, them running one way and us the other.
When we got a ways away, I asked, “What the hell, man? What just happened?”
Miguel: “They called us some maricóns.”6
Me: “No they didn’t.”
Miguel: “I heard ’em.”
Me: “Those white guys definitely did not call us maricóns.”
Miguel: “It doesn’t matter. We were gonna fight them anyway.”
And then I don’t know if he actually paused for a second or if I just began inserting it later when retelling the story, but he paused for a second and then he finished his thought: “They were white.”
I don’t think the world ever looked quite the same again, even if I didn’t realize that for several more years.
I grew up on the southwest side of San Antonio, Texas, which is just a different way of saying that I grew up in an aquarium full of Mexicans. All I’d ever really known was Mexican people and Mexican c
ulture. As far as I knew, the whole world looked like my neighborhood. I mean, I knew there were other races, but I’d never really given them any more thought than a regular young person would, and I’d certainly never had them presented to me as threats before, which is definitely how Miguel saw things at that moment.
I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to trust white people or black people or anybody who wasn’t Mexican, which was, essentially, what Miguel was fighting for. I’m saying, Miguel stole one of my Sega Genesis games after we’d already been friends for a couple months. By my knowledge, he was likely the least trustworthy person in that fight.
But what he said—or at least the general ideology that was there after you scraped off the ignorance—stuck to my chest. It crawled inside my rib cage and lived there. Race is a real thing, he accidentally explained to me. You are not the same as everyone.
About a year or so later was the first time I watched Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. I watched it in my bedroom. Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” which isn’t necessarily exclusively about race but is inextricably tied to it, is played prominently throughout the movie. I’d heard the song before but never bothered to pay attention to it beyond how exciting it was to say “Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiineteen eighty-nine.” But watching it as part of the movie, I remember hearing it, then thinking about Miguel. I called him on the house phone.7
I asked him if he’d ever seen the movie. He said no.
He asked me what it was about. I did a very bad job of explaining it.8
Then I asked him if he remembered the time we fought the two white kids in that parking lot. And he made fun of me for not knowing how to fight.
♦
HERE ARE SOME STATS ABOUT “FIGHT THE POWER” THAT ARE IMPRESSIVE, LISTED IN ORDER FROM MOST IMPRESSIVE TO LEAST IMPRESSIVE
The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song from Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed Page 9