>Fuck da police, as they say.
The 20th anniversary just passed:
<http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-compton16-2008aug16,0,5909844.story>http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-compton16-2008aug16,0,5909844.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Rapper Ice Cube talks about the 20th anniversary of N.W.A's 'Straight Outta Compton'
Twenty years after 'Straight Outta Compton,' Ice Cube considers its ramifications. By Geoff Boucher Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 16, 2008
THE JHERI CURL is long gone, and the scowl, well, Ice Cube still has that, but he uses it selectively now. It was 20 years ago this month that the group N.W.A -- with Cube as its most vital lyricist -- released the shocking "Straight Outta Compton." They called their music "reality rap," but everyone else just called it gangsta, and music history was made.
On a recent morning, in a hushed Burbank music studio, Cube sat down in a solitary corner with a Sharpie in his hand and a pile of posters showing his famous scowl. Over and over, without even looking down, the man born O'Shea Jackson signed his more famous name. "I can't tell you," he said, "how many times I signed that name in my life. . . ." The rapper and actor will have a new album in stores on Tuesday and a new film in theaters three days after that, but most of the posters in front of him were from years ago. He had just come back from a European tour, and the loudest cheers were for his oldest, angriest anthems. It was 20 years ago this month that the N.W.A album "Straight Outta Compton" changed the course of American music, and somehow 21st century kids in Amsterdam and Leipzig are bellowing along to its vintage black rage and uniquely Southern California sound.
"They know every word," Cube said with a bewildered sort of pride. "That music is still echoing, which nobody could have predicted. That's what I'm proudest of, the impact that we had. N.W.A changed the rules."
[...]