fleeting thoughts and other illusions -
©Ouija Cat'98

Straight Outta Compton
N.W.A.

The grandaddy of gangsta rap.

Anger and attitude, combined with an utter lack of regard for boundaries and limitations, produced a depiction of everyday black teenage life in the ghetto that was so dreadful, so horrifying, that the masses devoured it and demanded more. How does one break all the rules that govern what we are allowed to say, to describe, to brag about and flaunt?

Simple - do it eloquently.

Eloquence, from the proud assertions of the Declaration of Independence, to the despotic ramblings of Hitler and Lenin, turns around words and ideas destined for the fringe of the imagination, and directs them into the hearts and consciousnesses of all people.

What else could cause a pimply, emotionally and socially stunted Asian teenager to feel such a deep affiliation to these patently offensive descriptions of urban black rage?

Here, at last, was an unflinching affirmation of the repressed hostility that so many of us felt towards the supposed external forces that kept us from acting upon our desires and abilitites, clever and dishonest though they may be.

It opened the eyes of America to the plight of black ghetto life, but not in a way that inspired its hearts and pockets to save it; rather, it confirmed what many whites had suspected all along - that blacks were violent, ruthless outlaws who longed to be feared - and were proud of it.

And so America clamored for protection from them, all the while voyeuristically reveling in the lawlessness they embodied.

Straight Outta Compton redefined the limits of acceptability in our society, for better or for worse. In its wake, hundreds of so-called "gangsta rappaz" would dot the landscape of popular music in the following decade, and we would become so accustomed to hearing and seeing terrifying images of carnage and misogyny in songs and videos that they became scenes from our own pasts that had, long before, taken our innocence, and had left us numb not only to further shock, but to wonder and amazement as well.

© Ouija Cat 08/15/99