N.W.A.

N.W.A.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Straight Outta Compton is a biopic on how rappers turned political music from counterculture into a subculture that we know as hip-hop.  It argues that N.W.A. was driven, through racism and excessive police force and abuse, to create music to make the public aware of the young black man’s plight in south central Los Angeles in the 1980’s.  A viewer gets a very good idea of what it was like to be young, black, and terrorized.  Events like the Rodney King beating and the L.A. riots reinforce this to the viewer.

Nowadays there are two groups of rappers in the hip-hop industry.  There is the group that generally shies away from political messages because they feel they won’t be able to sell their music if they come off as N.W.A. did (Drake).  And then there is the group that challenges the authority and lines of freedom of speech like N.W.A. (Lamar who criticizes the prison system and who also grew up in Compton.)  Like Shaun King, the author known for his stories on police brutality and political activism and who recently brought up the Peyton Manning sexual misconduct scandal from the 1990’s says:

“All artists have to make a decision: Do I make music that might have the chance of helping me pay the bills or do I make music that represents my heart, my community, and how the country is going?”

So what I want you to do is to write an essay off of a quote from the movie.  In the movie O’Shea Jackson, who plays Ice Cube (and by the way is his real life son), says “Our art is a reflection of our reality.” Ice Cube even refers to himself as a journalist who’s “reporting on his community” more honestly than the media itself. 

Now this is kind of a broad writing assignment but you will get no help from me.  I am interested to see where your thoughts and writing take you on this assignment.  How many words you might be thinking?  1000 J