On the heels of N.W.A.’s forthcoming biopic release the rap quintet (minus Eazy-E) have been doing a lot of press for Straight Outta Compton and a lot of that has drawn parallels between today’s cases of police shootings of unarmed black men and those of when they began rapping.
Sitting down with HipHopDX Features Editor Andre Grant, Ice Cube and DJ Yella talked about the difference in how police brutality is handled today as opposed to when they were coming up. They say they believe that if a few police officers are convicted and subsequently given large prison sentences for killing African American individuals, things might change on how policing happens in America.
“The same thing is going on [after] 25 years, [it’s] just a little larger and looks a little larger,” Yella said via a segment of today’s (August 13) DX Daily. “It’s not in the ghetto all the time, it’s in the suburbs, all over. N.W.A., we would’ve probably made a couple of songs about it or something like that but you know but the problem is, the solution’s got to be fixed. That’s the problem. The cops are getting away with it, walking away. If they stretch a couple of these guys–life, no parole. That would send a little shockwave there and they be watching themselves.”
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Ice Cube also gave his take and says that while the group didn’t necessarily participate in protest, their music provided them a platform to let everyone know what was happening in their community.
“It’s a thing where this movie is so relevant. N.W.A. was so relevant,” he said. “N.W.A. was a group that was about honesty and truth. We wasn’t necessarily about protest. We were more like [speaking] about a lot of different things that were going on. You don’t want to confuse N.W.A. with Public Enemy but we did speak honestly about what we saw and what was wrong in our community and what was going on in our community.”
Straight Outta Compton is slated to hit theaters this Friday (August 14). Dr. Dre recently released his third solo studio album, Compton, which HipHopDX gave a 4.5 rating to.
Watch the full DX Daily segment below:
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