NWA: The most controversial men in music

[BooCocky]

When talking about controversy in the music industry look no further than NWA. Everything about them reeks of controversy. From the way they were formed to their music.

NWA formed in the late 80's when an admitted drug dealer invested his earning in a record company. Eric Wright AKA Eazy E found Ruthless Records with money gained illegally. With Ruthless Records started up,Eazy E decided to recruit some of his friends. Dr. Dre, Ice Cub, Yella and MC Ren.

In 1989 the controversial rap group released their debut album, Straight Outta Compton. Straight outta Compton had a vivid description on life in the ghetto and where these rappers emerged. One song on the album was Fuck the Police. It insulted police officers, making claims of police brutality. The CD had some mixed reviews. However, a reviewer for Newsweek acknowledged that Straight Outta Compton "introduced some of the most grotesquely exciting music ever made."

Another Newsweek reviewer added, "Hinting at gang roots, and selling themselves on those hints, they project a gangster mystique that pays no attention where criminality begins and marketing lets off." Defending the group's stance, original N.W.A. member Ice Cube told Rolling Stone: "Peace is a fictional word to me." "Violence is reality. . . . You're supposed to picture life as a bowl of cherries, but it's not. So we don't do nothin' fake."

Spoiler

Right about now NWA court is in full effect.
Judge Dre presiding in the case of NWA versus the police department.
Prosecuting attourneys are MC Ren Ice Cube and Eazy muthafuckin E.
Order order order. Ice Cube take the muthafuckin stand.
Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothin but the truth so help your black ass?

Why don't you tell everybody what the fuck you gotta say?

Fuck tha police
Comin straight from the underground
Young ***** got it bad cuz I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority

Fuck that shit, cuz I ain't tha one
For a punk muthafucka with a badge and a gun
To be beatin on, and throwin in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell

Fuckin with me cuz I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin my car, lookin for the product
Thinkin every ***** is sellin narcotics

You'd rather see me in the pen
Then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo
Beat tha police outta shape
And when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
Still can't swallow bread and water

I don't know if they **** or what
Search a ***** down and grabbin his nuts
And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get none
But don't let it be a black and a white one
Cuz they slam ya down to the street top
Black police showin out for the white cop

Ice Cube will swarm
On any muthafucka in a blue uniform
Just cuz I'm from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me
A young ***** on a warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dyin in LA
Yo Dre, I got somethin to say

Fuck the police (4X)

These rappers lived the life of a thug. They spoke nothing but the truth on how life was lived in Compton.

Straight out of Compton was so controversial, it was granted limited air time.

MTV refused to show the debut video on Straight Outta Compton claiming it was "glorified violence."

Controversy to a whole new level

Despite limited air time, Straight Outta Compton sold a million copies. Making all five rappers stars... The F.B.I, officially condemned "Fuck the Police" for encouraging violence against law-enforcement officers. The group members were supposedly harassed at a concert in Detroit by the Police.

The groups lyrics aroused heated controversy. Critics feel NWA glamorizes gang violence. Critics ate up the NWA but that didn't stop them. They still produced great music and controversial music for years. There second CD went off the charts, even though Ice Cube left the group, the group still went on to be very popular and controversial.

NWA brought gangsta rap to the forefront where violent lyrics were prevalent unseen before in mainstream music while it caused many to picket against NWA's music and hip hop in general, it also eventually lead to the acceptance of hip hop's new violent nature, and created the environment for the likes of 2pac's and biggie's deaths the controversial style and lyrics of NWA also caught the attention of suburban kids and rather than hip hop being mostly an African American music, it began the shift to Caucasian kids becoming fans of hip hop. NWA was controversial in many ways, it can be controversy in a negative eye, or you can view there controversy as positive. But no matter which way you look at it. There music style changed the world. They are truly controversy that created cash.

 

[jmt225]

These guys changed rap forever.

They were truly the first to bring the "thug" lifestyle mainstream. Sure, there 'gangsta' rappers before them, but none of them came nearly as close to making the impact N.W.A. made not just on hip hop, but on overall American Culture.

Straight Outta Compton has to go down as one of the most revolutionary and controversial albums in history. Becker did a fine job going into it, so I don't need to elaborate on it any further.

But there are plenty of things that made this group controversial though. I mean, take for example what these guys simply did with Los Angeles Raiders clothing. People in the late eighties and early nineties were getting shot over Raiders Starter Jackets. That's a fact, and without the N.W.A. supporting such gear and making it "cool" to wear clothing like Raiders logo, do you think that would have ever happened? Of course not.

That's just one of the many things that made them so controversial... they made violence cool, basically. They made it okay to be thugs, to be anti-law and not give a fuck about other people. Was it right? No, but it was controversial, that's for sure. And it all stemmed from their music.

N.W.A. brought West Coast violence to the forefront and were the first to show everyone how it was living in places like Compton. Nobody knew it was THAT bad, but they brought awareness to it, and while it caused even more harm than it did good at first, in the long run in really paid off because like I said... that part of Los Angeles finally started getting attention and people came to realize just how bad it was and how there needed to be some changes within that community. And while it's not perfect today, it's still much better than it was in the late eighties and early nineties.

Also, just want to point out that without them, who knows... maybe we never would have gotten movies such as "Boyz in Da Hood" or "Menace 2 Society," and maybe would have never gotten artist like 2Pac and Snoop Dogg in the future. They easily, EASILY changed the course of hip-hop and music throughout history. There's absolutely no telling where rap would be today had they never existed.

 

[Rhonda Rousey's Sports Bra]

Great choice Becker, only problem is that the group broke up way to fast. Sure the members of the group went on and some where controversial still but....

Just throwin' that out there.

NWA is a great choice though. From Straight Outta Compton and Fuck da Police to..... well singles careers. Eazy E did his own thing with Eazy Does it, Dre is now Dre, Cube does family movies, and I haven't really heard much of MC Ren or DJ Yella. They really only had controversy for about four years, so I'm hard pressed to say they are the most controversial musicians in history.

 

[Smooth Sexual Chocolate]

I agree with Blue on this one, just look at Ice Cube, sure he was controversial at one point in time, but that was a very long time ago.

NWA wouldn't have even had a video to get banned if it wasn't for Michael Jackson being the first African American to have a music video aired on national television, which was quite controversial at the time. So seeing as we want to talk about influences, Michael Jackson paved the way for other African Americans to be able to even have a music video that could be banned. He was also part of the Jackson 5, the first black group to be shown equal to white groups back in the early 70's, again making it possible for a group like NWA to be able to thrive when they did.

Now I'm not going to deny that they where an extremely controversial group, because obviously they where, but their time was very short lived, and their controversy faded into family movies and pop star collaborations. Where as someone like Michael Jackson had controversy following him for over 25 years, and there is still ongoing controversy with his death. So while I agree that the NWA was very controversial, it doesn't come close to the real life controversy as well as the span of controversy that followed Michael Jackson.

 

[BooCocky]

Great choice Becker, only problem is that the group broke up way to fast. Sure the members of the group went on and some where controversial still but....

Just throwin' that out there.

NWA is a great choice though. From Straight Outta Compton and Fuck da Police to..... well singles careers. Eazy E did his own thing with Eazy Does it, Dre is now Dre, Cube does family movies, and I haven't really heard much of MC Ren or DJ Yella. They really only had controversy for about four years, so I'm hard pressed to say they are the most controversial musicians in history.

Who cares if they broke up too fast? And Eminem quit making controversial music after like his third CD. I don't really get your point. N.W.A and there controversy changed the rap industry for life. It changed how gangsta rap was perceived and how the city of compton was perceived. There music was real. It was something you didn't hear in 1989. But they kept going at it, and eventually made it work. Them rapping this way opened the door for rappers like Pac and Biggie. They made gangsta rap acceptable.
Also getting back to the breaking up thing. If it wasn't for NWA people wouldn't have known who Ice Cube was. Eazy E got everyones name out there. NWA was just a stepping stone for bigger things. But without NWA it wouldn't have happened.
The groups importance multiplied with the release of every solo album. Cubes AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted employed Public Enemy's production team, the Bomb Squad, and introduced New York City listeners to the West Coast sound, known by this point as gangsta rap. "In 1992 N.W.A. producer and sometime rapper Dr. Dre released the California rap scene's most influential and definitive record, The Chronic; its marriage of languid beats and murderous gangsta mentality resulted in phenomenal sales. Most significantly, it launched Death Row Records and the career of Snoop Doggy Dogg.
"
You can say that Ice Cubes and Dre's CD had nothing to do with NWA but I disagree. NWA got there name out there. Made them popular, and those two CD's became a huge success. Thanks to the controversy that was brought forth by Straight outta Compton and *****z4life. It made those lyrics acceptable and ultimately changed the game and opened the door for other hardcore gangsta rappers. What were people listening to in 1989 before Straight Outta Compton? Sure as hell wasn't Gangsta rap. What were most rap fans listening to after the release of Straight Outta Compton? You bet your bottom dollar they were listening to NWA and Gangsta rap.
You can talk about Ice Cube moving onto children stuff, but people grow up. You can't live the life of a thug forever. Anyways, that still doesn't take away from the fact that he partially changed the game along with other members of the NWA. Without NWA you don't get people like Snoop and Biggie and 2pac. It's just not happening.

Wanna talk about controversy? They're still causing controversy 20 years later.

The City of St. Charles School District has suspended a high school teacher for at least one week, reports KMOV, for playing N.W.A.'s "Fuck tha Police" during a senior English class. Some students at St. Charles West High School were reportedly disturbed by the lyrics. Straight Outta Compton was released to great controversy way back in August 1988; this week's kerfuffle likely brought a smile to Eazy-E's face up in gangsta heaven.

It's enough to make N.W.A. fans want to pour one out.

The teacher was reportedly attempting to show the class how the use of offensive language has changed over time. The district superintendent told KMOV that the exercise would have been more appropriate in a college classroom.

That assertion has been a matter of some online debate, as the Internets weigh in on whether seventeen-year-olds are mature enough to ponder -- with a social scientist's detachment -- a song that was written before they were born.

If anything, this latest dust-up shows that some themes just might be timeless.

Witness this New York Times story from 1989.

And, closer to home, the celebrated Cissy Lacks case.

In the mid '90s, Ferguson-Florissant School District teacher Cissy Lacks won a federal lawsuit over her wrongful termination by the school district for, in part, allowing her students to use "street language" in the classroom. This from the November 20, 1996 edition of the Riverfront Times:

Students had written and performed scripts about drugs, gangs and similar topics, using street language freely. Lacks had deliberately refrained from censoring their creative writing, preferring a method that begins with self-expression and trust, and builds until students develop their own critical faculties, realizing that excessive empty language carries no real power.

 

[Rhonda Rousey's Sports Bra]

Fucking LULZ. You use something that happened about 5 minutes away from where I live. Randal Charles(the Super) is a tool anyway. They have such a strict zero tolerance policy it's not funny. I know a kid that got suspended from West for wearing his pants a little too low. Hardly controversial. You can't say cuss words at scool anyway so of course the teacher got suspended for listening to that CD.

The fact is N.W.A. was very controversial for it's time, but compared to the things we listen to today, they are a bit more on the tame side.

 

[BooCocky]

You can't be serious with that stuff. Be real man. They were the first rappers to rap about stuff like that. What kind of rap was going on in the late 80's? It sure as hell wasn't gangsta' rap. NWA paved the way for gangsta rap. Like I said in my opening post it brought gangsta rap to the forefront in terms of popularity. It opened the doors for people to adapt to the culture. It ultimately changed the game with one song. They were the first rap group to come out and rap about violence, police brutality, gang stuff and so on.

If it wasn't for NWA who is to say Tupac and Biggie would've been around? They're both better than NWA as group but Biggie and Tupac were hardly controversial. And if they were it didn't really have any long standing effect on the rap game. They didn't change it. NWA did.

I also want to end it on this note. Even though NWA is the group that is most frequently associated with pioneering gangsta rap. Their lyrics were more violent, they were openly confrontational and more shocking than the established rap acts, featuring incessant profanity. They controversial used the word "N*****". Straight outta Compton was the first blockbuster rap album ever produced. That album established west coast hip hop as a vital genre and it also established L.A. as a rival to NYC.

No matter how you look at it NWA was controversial. Dating to how they formed all the way to their singles careers. You can't tell me that doesn't matter, but it does. NWA put them on the map and if it wasn't for NWA gangsta rap would not have taken off. It helped with Cubes first album, helped establish Eazy E, and even made Dre. NWA are the most controversial men in the music industry and there's no way you can dispute that.

 

[Ty Burna]

Fucking LULZ. You use something that happened about 5 minutes away from where I live. Randal Charles(the Super) is a tool anyway. They have such a strict zero tolerance policy it's not funny. I know a kid that got suspended from West for wearing his pants a little too low. Hardly controversial. You can't say cuss words at scool anyway so of course xthe teacher got suspended for listening to that CD.

The fact is N.W.A. was very controversial for it's time, but compared to the things we listen to today, they are a bit more on the tame side.

I'm gonna start with this comment because it's so full of hilarity I just can't help myself. So let's compare NWA against what most mainstream hip hop puts out today. NWA made gangsta rap popular. They rapped about selling drugs, gunning people down, hos, and the list goes on. They weren't talking about lollipops or swag. They were talking about life on the street where many hip hop acts talk about life in the club. Hip hop today is the more tame music compared to the raw and unbridled stories of life that NWA dropped

It was because of those raw stories that the controversy starts at. They brought light to the absolute horrible conditions people in Compton were living in. That would have been all fine and good, but they glorified the gangsta life and that's what bothered many people, most notably the white conservatives around the world. Here are 5 African American's who are making the struggle in the street look magnificent, who made crime cool essentially. Now this may not have been an issue if it was just those in the ghetto ate up their music, but it was also the white suburban kids who started listening to NWA and saw them as rebellious music. Gangsta rap rapidly spread throughout all of America because of this.

Of course the controversy most have talked about here is their song "Fuck The Police". Now the obvious reason why this was controversial was their lyrics about killing police officers and the claims the police were racist. Naturally those high and mighty in the world immediately condemned the song. This was more than simply an anti police song. This song captured the under current of tension between the streets and an obvious over zealous police force that was taking liberties with the law and even some being crooked. But how dare such thugs and criminals claim police were brutalizing citizens? How dare they make a claim against such an esteemed group of men?

Maybe because it was true? And that's exactly what it was like and it all came to a head about four year later. After the release of footage of the Rodney King incident, and the subsequent trial, finally those people that knew how brutal the police were in the LA area were to finally get vindication. The whole world would finally know the police brutality that was going on in their area, and the police officers who beat Rodney King would become the scapegoats for the problems they had over the years.

That didn't happen as the four officers were found not guilty by an almost all white jury. This of course led to the destructive riots that crippled LA for multiple days. NWA brought this issue to the forefront first and was wrote off as nothing more than a violent hate filled song against police. That proved to be otherwise, and it may have been a bit exaggerated about what may have gone down, it still was proven to speak the truth.

This is what separates NWA from the other three options chosen for most controversial. Eminem and Marilyn Manson were controversial just for the shock value of their comments, but really was their any impact on the words they said? With Manson there is debate on that but with Eminem there was not. The other choice Michael Jackson was focused on his personal life and decisions and not about the music, but I digress. NWA's controversies stemmed from them rapping about the true stories and situations they lived in at the time. The controversy surrounding NWA was situated on a social and political environment that had completely been ignored for many years, and yet NWA brought that environment to the forefront, glorifying the situation they lived in and made the gangster lifestyle cool for the mainstream. They didn't just make shocking statements for the sake of making shocking statements, they made the statements because that's what they lived through. The controversy went much deeper than just a superficial comment or misconstrued comment. Their controversy was similar to Jackson's, as it was based around how they lived. The difference is that they involved their music in it and that's why they're more controversial as musicians. They made music based on their lives and were unapologetic if anyone saw issue with the way they were. They brought issues to the forefront that was always pushed away and forgotten, but it was real issues and real stories that caused the controversy. That's what's important, it was real and many weren't ready for the real.