F Gary Gray’s critical and commercial hit Straight Outta Compton has received only one nomination at the 2016 Oscars, for Best Original Screenplay. The team behind the movie expected more. American rapper and producer Ice Cube, on whose hip-hop group N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) the biographical film is based, was quick to voice his displeasure. “I’m not surprised. It’s the Oscars, they do what they do. The people loved the movie. The people supported the movie. Number one at the box office, over $200 million worldwide, you know? I can’t be mad,” he said in a television interview right after the announcement.
Cube addressed what has become a glaring issue: the Academy’s nearly all-white nomination list that is so low on diversity that it has prompted a boycott call by actress Jada Pinkett Smith. (Spike Lee has supported her.) The movie takes its name from the album that came out in 1988, a mise en abyme worth returning to.
The film tells the story of the group NWA, which emerged from the streets of Compton in Los Angeles in the 1980s and revolutionised the hip-hop genre with their crudely honest lyrics about their lives in the ghetto lives. In 1987, tired with their clashes with the law over drugs, the group members recorded and released, “Boyz-n-the-Hood.” The song was written by Ice Cube and rapper Eric Lynn Wright, known by his stage name Eazy-E, performed it. Music manager Jerry Heller (played by Paul Giamatti in the film) was quick to spot their talent and began managing the group.
The original line-up included Ice Cube (played by O’Shea Jackson Jr, Ice Cube’s son), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Dr Dre (Andre Romelle Young), Arabian Prince (Kim Nazel), Ice Cube, DJ Yella (Antoine Carraby) and MC Ren (Lorenzo Jerald Patterson).
Soon after, their debut album, Straight Outta Compton, was released in 1988. The album popularised gangster rap, the sub-genre of hip hop, in which the music and lyrics speak of the “thug” life. Excessive use of profanity and sexual and violent imagery marked the songs and also reflected the lives of the urban African American youth.
A controversial protest song, “Fuck tha Police”, highlighted racial profiling and police brutality in Los Angeles and appeared to anticipate the present-day tensions between African Americans and the establishment. The track so incensed the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the bureau’s assistant director of public affairs, Milt Ahlerich, wrote a letter to the group expressing the bureau’s displeasure, terming the song as “discouraging and degrading to these brave, dedicated officers”.
The letter only boosted the popularity of both the album and the band. Straight Outta Compton entered the US Billboard Top LPs chart and sold over three million copies. It is often cited in greatest albums lists, has been a source of inspiration, and has been frequently referenced in popular culture.
Gray’s movie released in America on August 14, 2015. It has emerged as the highest-grossing music biopic of all time, beating the Johnny Cash film Walk the Line. Its worldwide box office is over $200 million (the movie has not been released in India).
Will it, won’t it? Straight Outta Compton is in a winning situation even if it does not take home the gong. Notoriety brings it fame, not the other way round.