Straight Outta Compton, the biopic about West Coast Hip-Hop groundbreakers NWA (Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, DJ Yella and MC Ren) is one of the best made music biopics in years. It also manages to create an affecting snapshot of a particular era and place in culture. Unfortunately, the movie has the depth and nuance of a Wikipedia entry.  Of course, that’s not to dismiss the movie’s accomplishments. The movie’s mere existence constitutes a kind of cultural triumph. It may seem silly to us now with Dre selling headphones and Ice Cube starring in family-comedies but once upon a time these artists were considered by many on all parts of the political spectrum to be “dangerous” and “subversive.” It once seemed impossible to imagine a Hollywood film about a group that called itself “Niggaz With Attitude.” The cultural perception of rappers has since changed from terrors and trouble-makers to chic accessories of a pop food group. What was once “terrifying” about N.W.A  (their first album was the first ever slapped with the “Parental Advisory” label) in the late 1980s and early 1990s hasn’t become “safe,” so much as palatable and profitable by the mainstream. Thus there’s a conundrum with a movie like this especially when Cube and Dre are in charge behind-the scenes. Do they tell an unflinching & honest portrait of themselves or do they celebrate their significance? Fortunately or unfortunately they went “halvsies” on both making a final product that feels at times brutally earnest yet dramatically inert at the same time.

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