Straight Outta Compton is by no means a comedy, but it has its share of laugh lines, and the biggest one comes right around the movie's halfway point, as N.W.A is on tour for the first time and enjoying the fruits of their newfound fame. An angry dude shows up to their hotel-room afterparty looking for his girlfriend Felicia; after a brief hallway standoff, our heroes and their companions for the night head back into the suite. Everyone, that is, except for Felicia, who Ice Cube (portrayed by his son, O'Shea Jackson Jr.) pushes out of his way and out of the celebration with a single line.
"Bye, Felicia."
The theater I saw the movie in erupted—as will most theaters. It's the canniest moment of the film: a young rapper (Jackson Jr. is also an emcee who performs under the name OMG) playing his father as a young rapper who will in a few years become the star and co-writer of a movie that features a throwaway line, which another 20 years later will become a meme and a discomfiting reality show. As far as groupie-removal strategies go, it's hard to get more Internet-savvy than that. (Not surprisingly, it was the 24-year-old Jackson Jr. who came up with the idea.)
Make no mistake, the scene has its flaws; its casual misogyny laughs off an abiding issue N.W.A had, especially in its post-Ice Cube years. But its magical retcon act is also the truest distillation of what Straight Outta Compton is up against: a collection of pressures so heavy it can actually collapse time.
SOC is one of only two movies about hip-hop that can be considered a true biopic (the other being Notorious). Those of us for whom N.W.A was an indelible part of our early musical life aren't just hungry for a film about the World's Most Dangerous Group—we're hungry for any movie that treats hip-hop as the invaluable American artform that it is.
But today's thirty- and fortysomethings who once scribbled Ruthless Records logos in their notebooks aren't the only ones. Thanks to a seemingly neverending deluge of police brutality against unarmed African-Americans, 2015 feels like Daryl Gates-era LA writ large, and the movie's promotional campaign wisely amplifies that resonance. Both the trailers and director F. Gary Gray's finished movie thus feel less like an artifact than they otherwise might, and even people who have never heard the album Straight Outta Compton are excited to see this movie. Analysts are predicting an opening weekend in the neighborhood of $35 million or higher—an astonishing figure for a non-blockbuster August release.
Neither fan hopes nor financial expectations is ultimately what weighs down the movie, though. What does is the very thing that sets it apart. Unlike Notorious, which came out 12 years after Biggie's death, SOC is a biopic about artists who are still alive. That gives the movie the singular burden of satisfying its subjects, especially a certain movie star and a certain megaproducer/tech magnate, both of whom were closely involved with the movie's production. Together, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre might have helped invent the concept of "reality rap," but their need to establish their legacy—while understandable—ultimately makes the film feel less like an unvarnished chronicle of their rise than the story they want to one day tell their grandkids.
In many ways, SOC is full of what can only be thought of as fan service. In a series of opening vignettes, Gray introduces the five members of the group almost exactly like Guardians of the Galaxy did its intergalactic locales. (Sure, it's a storytelling device for those unfamiliar with N.W.A, but it also grants the artists near-superhero stature.) At one point, Gray serves up almost the entire first two verses of Ice Cube's 50-megaton diss record of "No Vaseline", one of the greatest knockout blows in rap history. But that deference to the music and its makers comes at a price. In the movie's version of events, Ice Cube is the sole screenwriter of Friday (and not even a DJ Pooh cameo!), and Dre (played by Corey Hawkins) manages to explain away some thorny early-'90s legal troubles—including his rightfully maligned 1991 assault on journalist Dee Barnes—in the space of half a sentence.
Memoir isn't a warts-and-all kind of artform, and to expect otherwise is naive. But while scandal isn't a prerequisite in this kind of movie, evolution is, and it's where the bigscreen versions of Dre and Cube could have looked for redemption. Instead, every single one of the obstacles they face are external, from crooked manager Jerry Heller to a Priority Records executive to Suge Knight. The only member of N.W.A who seems to find deliverance anywhere is Eazy-E, whose deathbed statement to his fans is the lone self-aware note in the entire movie.
I loved the movie; hell, I'm its target audience. N.W.A was an awakening for me in the same way Public Enemy was, and Ice Cube will always be one of the most talented rappers to ever bless a mic. Death Certificate is the only album that's been on every listening device I've ever owned. And after 30 years of hip-hop inching its way through movies, it's about time we're finally enshrining its titans. So this isn't a call for a different movie. What Cube and Dre (and Ren and Yella and Eazy) did, what they helped create and continue to foster, will never be undone. (Not to mention that when musical rights are involved, "authorized biography" is literally the only way to go.)
Instead, it's call for a little less curation and a little more candor. Cube and Dre are icons as much for their growth and maturation as for their early success, and they have families and legacies and reputations that aren't going anywhere. They've evolved past the young men they were, and they've transcended actions and attitudes that happened decades ago. A little willingness to engage the darker side of their rise—not their foes on the outside, but the ones on the inside—would have made for a movie that was as satisfying as it was nostalgic. The clearest picture can only come from a camera lens with no vaseline.
