While it may have been inspired by Straight Outta Compton, it isn’t tied to that association, and that bodes well for its longevity.
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The film mixes in other names that are well-known in hip-hop, and chronicles Dr. Dre’s teaming with Suge Knight to launch Death Row Records, and features a brief cameo by Tupac Shakur, the legend who was signed to the label. “It will give children something to do amid these long summers”, said long-lasting Compton occupant Rick Bludso, when gotten some information about the new focus by The Los Angeles Times. “I’ve been truly attempting to do something exceptional for Compton and just couldn’t exactly make sense of what it was”, he told the Beats 1 host Zane Lowe in a meeting directed before the end of last week. From that first day on he simply never left.
While in time-tested hip-hop fashion the album’s lyrics are full of bloodshed and boasting, his tone is striking for coming off not as angry but inspirational. Dre as he’s set to break his nearly 20-year studio album drought with the release of Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr.
“I never realized that was one of my talents, writing for other people, until I came out here [Los Angeles]”, said Mez.
Dr Dre recently announced that he will donate royalties earned from “Compton” to the funding of a new performing arts and entertainment facility in the city of Compton.
“Everyone was so excited when we first got that beat from Dahi”. (MC Ren and DJ Yella, played by Aldis Hodge and Neil Brown Jr., are mostly relegated to the background, though Brown runs off with a few well-timed laugh lines.) The opening scenes unfold in maddeningly boilerplate fashion; when Dre, pulled from his headphone-assisted daydreams atop a pile of carefully arranged LP covers, is chewed out by his mother with such well-worn clichés as, “I work my ass off and I refuse to let you throw it all away”, you can set your watch to her stern slap across his face. It is possible the type of hip-hop we listen to now wouldn’t exist.
“I wish I was, that definitely would have completed the dream”, he said with a laugh. “I’m so ready to prove myself now”.
As Dre takes a walk down memory lane on the finale “Talking To My Diary”, he says his love for music hasn’t faded. “I can make you legit”, he assures Eazy, and indeed he does, while taking what seems an increasingly disproportionate piece of the pie for himself.
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Compton, a body of work lauded by the Irish Times as “magnificent”, with “track after track rocking back and forth with a vibrant, invigorated and pointed momentum”, is rich with imagery and ideology about life in the infamous southern Los Angeles neighborhood. His beard is awesome.
