Good Songs XXVIII

Crumbs on the Table – D-Nice

Informer – Snow

I Left My Wallet in El Segundo – A Tribe Called Quest

We Want Eazy – Eazy-E

OPP – Naughty by Nature

Murder Rap – Above the Law

Principal’s Office – Young MC

Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em – Eric B. and Rakim

2-Hype – Kid N’ Play

Playground – Another Bad Creation

Straight Outta Compton – NWA

Funky Cold Medina – Tone Loc

Doowatchalike – Digital Underground

Mistadobalina – Del the Funkee Homosapian

Fight the Power – Public Enemy

It Takes Two – Rob Base and DJ Easy Rock

New Jack Hustler – Ice-T

The Bomb – Ice Cube

How Ya Like Me Now? – Kool Moe Dee

The Gas Face – 3^rd Bass

This is the last “Good Songs” tape that I own, which means that this is the last Good Songs blog entry that I am writing. And it’s appropriate that I’m ending this nostalgia quest with a tape that is absolutely reveling in nostalgia. I created this tape in 1999* with the intent of driving around, reminiscing about the good old days.

* I’m pretty sure I subtitled this Good Songs tape “Middle School” because the songs on it definitely weren’t new school and they weren’t old enough to be old school—and by extension, neither was I. I also created a heavy metal mix tape, called Hairy Velveeta (it was cheesy hair metal, get it?) but that tape and a few other Good Songs tapes were stolen from my car one day. Hopefully that thief created a blog where he comments on tapes he stole from cars parked in Revere, MA. If he does, send me an email and we can link blogs!

It was around this time in my life where I began to slow down my consumption of new music. There were some new bands that I liked and that I’d make the effort to listen to, but new music wasn’t as available to me anymore. I had a legit career where I wasn’t able to sit in front of MTV* and be spoonfed the latest hits.

* It was also at this point that MTV decided that playing music 24 hours a day wasn’t paying the bills, so they began focusing on TV shows rather than music. If you read the oral history of MTV entitled, “I Want My MTV” you’ll understand exactly why the channel had to do that.

The radio stations that I listened to became more segmented and I concentrated mostly on rock. The late 90s were a bad time for rock music as third-generation Grunge and nü-metal was really coming into focus and bands like Creed, KoRn, Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock were the most popular acts in the country. And I got aboard that train for a little while, but that music was terrible. It was all aggression with zero intelligence, after awhile it became very boring.

Around this time I created this tape, I moved back to my parents’ house in Amesbury and perhaps I was inspired (traumatized?) by living in my old bedroom that I went back into my “old studio”. It’s not a bad mix and does a better job of capturing what I was listening to back in the day than the previous other mixes did combined.

I was a bit surprised that older mixes didn’t have any Ice-T on them because my friends and I listened to Ice-T’s “O.G.” as much as any other tape we collectively had. And I mean we listened to him a lot, even going back to his old tapes like “Power” and “Iceberg” and newer ones like “Home Invasion” and his rock/rap band: “Body Count”—which were both horrible albums.

The one thing that I never noticed was Ice-T’s very prominent lisp. It wasn’t until comedian Paul F. Tompkins brought it up on a Podcast did I start listening to Ice-T’s old stuff in a new light. The juxtaposition of a tough guy and his posturing spit out through a lisp is hilarious.

In the fall of 1991, Naughty By Nature’s “OPP” was everywhere. The title of the song was sly and subtle (at least sly and subtle for an early 90s rap song) and the background beats are awesome. Especially when you layer the Jackson 5 “ABC” cut on top of it. It was a monster hit that produced parodies (MTV got on board with “Are You Down With MTV” that featured the gang from Yo!MTV Raps rapping), t-shirts and headlines alluding to the question. It was NbN’s world that year and we were all just living in it.

I was surprised that “OPP” or at the very least “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” (their second single, which sampled Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”) wasn’t included on any Good Songs tapes. Glad to hear that I corrected that mistake.

Since I’ve written about every other song on this tape, that’s pretty much it for this edition. I didn’t exactly stop create mix tapes in 1999, I moved on to creating mix CDs and they were really bad. And not bad in a way that it was fun to listen to some of these bad Good Songs mixes. They were bad in a God-I-never-want-to-listen-to-this-garbage-again, I mean Fred Durst was involved. The fact is, I have the CD booklet in my car and there have been times where I’ve tried listening to the tracks and it’s not good. Maybe in 10 years I’ll revisit, but I’m not ready to do so today.

In the next few days I’ll probably do a Good Songs wrap up where I figure out which track was on the most tapes (early bet is something by Lenny Kravitz, probably “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over”) and some other odds and ends.

Regrets? I’ve had a few. The one thing that I wish that I had done differently was make “Funky Cold Medina” the last song on this tape. Why? Because it was the very first track on “Good Songs I” and that would have made for some nice symmetry. Good Songs could have been a Rust Cole infinity circle, man. Start with “Funky Cold Medina” and just keep on going and going and going and going until you get back to the drink that knocks you out. But that’s the thing about life and endings, it is very rare that you understand that something is going to end and that you have the foresight to have it end in a place where it began. 

Thank you for reading and thank you for the comments. For me, this has been a really fun writing exercise and an interesting trip down memory lane. I hope that you enjoyed it too. 

Good Songs XII

Jump – Kriss Kross

What it Takes – Aerosmith

Poison – Bell Biv DeVoe

It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday – Boyz II Men

Motownphilly – Boyz II Men

Into the Fire – Dokken

Burning Like a Flame – Dokken

Heroin – Velvet Underground

We Want Eazy – Eazy-E

Radio – Eazy-E

Epic – Faith No More

Falling to Pieces – Faith No More

100 Miles and Runnin’ – NWA

I hate Halloween. I don’t like dressing up. I don’t like the cold in the air as I’m walking around outside--it reminds me that summer is done. I don’t like begging for candy. Even when I wasn’t trick or treating, I still hated Halloween*. For a few years in the mid-90s, Kriss Kross made Halloween bearable for me.

The best and easiest Halloween costume I ever came up with was a Kriss-Kross inspired outfit. I wore a pinstriped Chicago Bulls Starter jersey backwards (before it was a Halloween costume, I loved this shirt unconditionally), a backwards baseball cap and a pair of Z. Cavaricci’s also backwards. It was a good conversation starter, it treaded very slightly on the nostalgia trail and it allowed me to live my fantasy as the Daddy Mack (or Mack Daddy). The only problem was peeing. With the fly in the rear, that was difficult.

* When I got in my 20s, my stance on Halloween softened a bit; mainly because every party I went to was filled with women wearing “sexy blah, blah, blah” costumes. Sexy nurses, sexy Josie and the Pussycats, sexy nuclear technicians, it was a good time. Now that I’m a father of two daughters, karma is going to come back to me two-fold. Therefore, even though I'm no longer dressing up, Halloween still sucks.

I haven’t listened to “Jump” in awhile, but when I was checking it out today, I noticed that there is a lot bravado for a couple of prepubescents. The first line (“Don’t compare us to another Bad Little Fad”) is a shot across the bow to the East Coast Family’s younger members: Another Bad Creation. Coming from a pair whose entire career was built on wearing clothes backwards, that’s a bit aggressive and tone deaf.

Speaking of aggressive, the entire song is full of bitter machismo, striking out at any and all comers. “When they ask if Kriss Kross rocks? You say ‘Believe that’.” I’m not sure exactly why this struck me as odd—in reality it doesn’t, it’s early 90s rap. Aside from PM Dawn there weren't a lot of soft crooners—but maybe it’s because I remember them as two cute little kids rapping that I expected something less pointed.

I owned Another Bad Creation’s “Coolin’ at the Playground, Ya Know!” and they are not represented at all on any Good Songs tape. I liked “Iesha”, I liked “Playground”* so I’m not sure why I didn’t include any of those songs on any of these tapes. I was probably extremely embarrassed to admit owning the tape--I didn't even buy it at the store, I got it through the mail via Columbia House. And if one of those songs ended up on a Good Songs mix, I’d have a lot of explaining to do.

* I know that most people give Snoop Dogg all the credit for popularizing the –izzle speak, which is adding izzle to the end of words. But there is a verse in the ABC song “Playground” that goes “It’s the Miz-ark (the kids’ name was Mark) chillin’ in the piz-ark, I got a break because my momma said to be home by diz-ark.” The question I want is answered is: “Did Snoop Dogg steal from ABC?” because that’s pretty damn whack if true.

I’m pretty sure that I created this tape in the late spring of 1992 because the first two songs have a very AHS-baseball flair to them. What I mean by that is that I borrowed “Totally Krossed Out” from a teammate and another teammate spent the better part of that season singing “What It Takes” at the top of his lungs, at all times. I pretty much despised Aerosmith by this point in my life (a dislike that continues to this very day!) and I was not regularly listening to “Pump” at all. I think that the reason why I included this song is due to my teammate getting this song jammed into my noggin for three months.

In retrospect, it’s probably the best late-career Aerosmith song around. If that’s not damning with faint praise, I don’t know what is.

Looking at the rest of this song list, I was perplexed by the song choices and then it hit me as I was listening to them in order: these were all songs that I used to listen to when I was holed up in my brother’s room playing Nintendo. My brother got a CD player really early and was buying discs with every penny he saved. And since the Nintendo was in his room, I’d end up listening to whatever was in his disc player as I was playing “RBI Baseball” or “Ninja Kid” or “Nintendo Ice Hockey”.

So much so that, “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” doesn’t make me wistfully remember a friend who has passed away. It makes me wistfully recall when the computer had the pitcher hit a bomb off me in the bottom of the ninth to ruin a perfect game in RBI. Damn you, computerized Brett Saberhagen! Damn you straight to Nintendo Hell!

Boyz II Men was an interesting group, they were part of Michael Bivens’ East Coast Family with Bell Biv DeVoe, ABC and the all-white, all-absent Sudden Impact. They were easily the most talented of the quartet of groups (and I’m making the wild-ass assumption that SI sucked, since we only caught a quick glimpse of them in the “Motownphilly” video pointing and acting “cool”) but I’m not sure if that is like being the valedictorian of summer school. At the very least, they could really sing. In subsequent years, they had a run of number one songs “I’ll Make Love to You” and “On Bended Knee” but then they just disappeared. They show up every once in awhile but usually in that “Remember how wacky the 90s were” type of cameo.

I wonder why they never made it last?

Out of all the songs included on that list, there is one that sticks out like a sore thumb. A good sore thumb, but a sore thumb nonetheless. And that’s the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin”. One of the truths that I have been forced to face during this exercise is that I wasn’t as progressive of a music listener as I once thought. Most of the stuff I really enjoyed were spoon-fed to me by either MTV or the radio. If I did make a foray into something that wasn’t in heavy rotation, it was something in medium rotation*.

* MTV had a show on Sunday nights, called 120 Minutes which played two hours of alternative (before this was a dirty word) music. Stuff like the Pixies, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Cure, maybe Nirvana before “Nevermind”. And we could listen to WFNX beaming from Boston. In thinking back to my high school days, I don’t think that anyone was into that scene at all and I wonder why? The music is really good, certainly better than the tripe that was on the radio and MTV, but I didn’t know anyone who liked that stuff until I went to college. I wonder how different my life would be if I got into that music while in high school?

So I’d love to write about how I found a Velvet Underground and Nico tape in some cutout bin at some mall tape store and that I took it home and my whole world view was magically transformed. Like I was some male version of Janie from VU’s  song “Rock N Roll”. But that’s not the truth. My brother bought the soundtrack to Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” and this song was on that CD.

I guess that there are worse ways of being introduced to a new band. But I remember playing this over and over and over and over again and really liking the tempo and the feeling that song imparted. I have never done heroin, but this song sounded what heroin felt like. The dreamy, slow opening with the drum, the manic, noisy middle of the screeching guitars and a giddy Lou Reed talking about death, to the crashing fade out of ultimately not knowing.

Though I found it on a soundtrack of a movie, it was way more mind-expanding than any other song on this tape (aside from “Falling to Pieces”, I suppose). The old joke is that only 15,000 people bought Velvet Underground’s first album and all 15,000 started rock bands. The humor being that just about every band says their influence is VU. I can’t claim that I’ve been influenced by VU, I’ve listened to a bunch of their stuff and “Heroin” is still my favorite song, but including it on the last Good Songs of high school is a nice departing point for college.

The Top Second Banana: AC Slater vs. Dylan McKay

Two years ago I wrote a Blog entry that was the most popular entry I ever wrote. In it I compare 90s titans Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestly) from “Beverly Hills 90210” to Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) from “Saved By The Bell”. We all had a good laugh when Brandon squeaked by with a 8-7 win over Zack. Now we’re going to do this all over again with a sequel that won’t be derivative at all and have the second bananas take center stage as Luke Perry and Mario Lopez will fight over who can be the greatest second-best man.

* My initial thought was to have a girls of 90210 and SBTB battle, but I haven’t been able to figure out what to do with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, also known as Andrea Zuckerman. If I include her that destroys the 90210 gang because she was a terrible character. But if I don’t include her, then we’re missing something aren’t we? And before you ask, no I will not compare Screech to David Silver because that’s pathetic and there is no comparison to be made to 1990s superman Steve Sanders.

You will notice that there is another really good picture of Tiffani Amber Thiessen at the top of this post because, you know, she’s hot and I’d rather stare at her than Luke Perry or Mario Lopez.

I’m going to use some of the same categories that I used in the previous post, but there will be some surprises. The same rules apply: for the most part these categories will only be judged on stuff that happened to these characters when they were in high school, though I do reserve the right to throw that rule out the window if I have a chance to make a cheap joke.

Height: Do you know that Mario Lopez (AC Slater) is 5’11”? It’s true, at least according to the Internet. And Luke Perry (Dylan McKay) is a Lilliputian 5’9”. Between Perry and Priestly (who was 5’8”) it’s no wonder why the 90210 male leads didn’t go to the Magic Mountain for Senior Skip Day; neither of them could meet the height requirements for the rides. Hey yooooooooo! Point: Slater takes this one easily.

Intelligence: Slater supposedly scored over 1000 on his SATs, however I don’t think that he could spell book if you spotted him the B and the K. Dylan was a stereotypical slacker who had the appearance of not caring about learning, until Brandon found the collected works of Byron* in his car. It took a year or two until he decided to get his shit together and astounded everyone by taking every single tough course at West Bev his senior year. So while Dylan is obviously smarter than Slater, I don’t know how smart it is to take a bunch of difficult classes your senior year. What are you trying to prove? Point: Slater. To quote a sample from Third Bass’ Cactus Cassette: “He is stupid, but he knows that he is stupid, so that makes him smart.”

* No, this wasn’t a collection of Room 19 blog posts, though it’s nice of you to immediately think of that. It was actually the collected works of the English poet Byron. Dylan introduces the poet to Brandon by saying, “He was mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Which is how I introduce myself to strangers.

Car: I don’t think that Slater drove a car, he just walked around Bayside in his tank top and Cavaricci pants. Dylan drove around in a 1961 Porsche 356 Speedster, which is a pretty sweet ride. Point: Dylan.

Girls: Let’s get this out of the way right now, if Slater or Dylan ever went to your school they would be awash in women. Teachers would fuck them in the middle of classes. However on their respective shows, they were always losing girls named Kelly to Brandon and Zack. Even when the girl wasn’t named Kelly, they were always getting stuck with the table scraps. On the rare occasions that they won their dream girl, there was always an asterisk: Brenda Walsh was Brandon’s sister, Jessie Spano was Zack’s best friend. Crap like that. I bet that in real life, Lopez and Perry have some sort of crippling confidence issues that were manifested by their shows’ writers glee in making them the losers.

But let’s focus on the positives: Dylan got a lot of tail in high school. From Kelly to Brenda to women unnamed, the perception was that as long as Brandon didn’t want her, she was Dylan’s property. Slater only dated uptight Jessie and one or two other girls (whom I can’t even remember right now, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt). We do know that Dylan took Brenda’s virginity and since sex with her wasn’t a big deal to him—it was implied that he’s had the sex a few times before.* When Slater and Jessie kissed, the audience had a collective orgasm. He wasn’t getting laid on that show. Ever. Point: Dylan.

* Brenda was such a shrew about it too, “How do I know you don’t have a disease,” she bitchily blubbered. “Because I’ve been tested Bren.” See, Dylan had an answer for everything. Kinda cool because I think most guys would have gotten whiny, angry and desperate. That’s not sexy, guys.

Daddy Issues (their own): Slater’s dad was a bit of a dick. For one thing, he named him Albert Clifford Slater. For another he kept moving him around the country, never letting him establish any roots—I wanted to use the speech Slater gave at the Max from one of the umpteen times when the gang was trying to save the restaurant from closing, but I don’t think it would work here. I don’t have Lopez’ gravitas. He also kept threatening to bounce him to military school. Dylan’s dad was a bit of a dick, but they started reestablished their relationship, getting close (they sang “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”!) and then he blew up. At least Dylan’s dad lived on a house boat and was rich. Point: Slater.

Daddy Issues (their girlfriends’ fathers): James Eckhouse, who played Walsh patriarch Jim Walsh, could be one of the finest actors ever to grace the stage and he was often on the receiving end of Dylan’s acid-filled rants about how controlling he was. Eventually they became business partners, then friends, perhaps even lovers? I don’t know about the last one, but before they were buddies, Dylan really hated Jim for awhile and it was great. I don’t think Jessie Spano had a father. She was such an over-the-top feminist, I think that she sprang fully-grown from her mother’s forehead like Athena did from Zeus. Though if she did have a dad, I bet he would have been a hen-pecked wuss who drank Scotch by the gallon in a dark basement while pondering how to make his wife and daughter’s deaths look like an accident. Point: Dylan.

Athletics: Slater was all-city in football, track and wrestling. Dylan could barely wear a baseball cap correctly. Check out the episode where his fahter dies and “Dark Dylan” spends the episode trying to coerce the real Dylan into grabbing a drink. Dark Dylan wears a black baseball cap and it looks like he was only made aware of the existence of this article of clothing seconds before the scene was filmed. “You do what with this? You wear it where? Like this? I don’t understand this thing at all.” Point: Slater.

Relationship with the Star: Dylan and Brandon were unusually close for one guy nailing another guy’s twin sister, often when he was in the next room. I don’t think it would be a huge deal if you’re out of college, but in high school Brandon would probably be pissed that some jackass is having sex with his sister and rip on Dylan to Steve. “Brah, that’s so not cool. I’m in the next room!”

But in 90210-land, Brandon was surprisingly okay with it and so they were like brothers. In fact, whenever Dylan got into trouble, Brandon would bail him out. At the same time, Brandon would look to Dylan as the guidepost as to how Californians lived, especially in the early episodes. It was kind of like the Fonz and Richie’s relationship in the first few seasons of “Happy Days”.

Slater was originally written as Zack’s nemesis. But Slater only outsmarted Zack once out of every ten schemes, so it wasn’t much of a rivalry. Then they teamed up and became best friends. Though the relationship wasn’t always so even-keeled. Zack knew that he had the upper hand with Slater, Slater is the one who brokered the truce, so I don’t think that Zack ever really respected him and I bet that ate at Slater every night too. “Fucking Zack, he thinks he’s so cool. Damn him.” Slater was so dysfunctional, he had a lizard for a best friend. Until Zack accidentally killed it. Point: Dylan.

Drugs and Alcohol: One night at a toga party Slater got drunk and wasn’t able to drive. He had his friend, Zack who was also bombed, drive home. They got into a car accident, Slater broke his leg and was unable to play in the big football game. Slater is also on the record as being anti-pot.

Dylan is a former alcoholic, he was going to AA meetings in high school AND is a former heroin addict. I think that he was pro-pot at one point too. You may think that this would tip the scales in Dyl-weed’s (yes, this was a nickname that was used on the show) favor but it doesn’t mainly because Dylan was a bigger asshole drunk than sober. And this doesn’t tip the scales in Slater’s favor either because you know when he got hammered he got all frat bro-y and rape-y. Point: no one.

Family: Slater had a sister who was attracted to Zack (of course) which understandably angered Slater. I don’t recall anything about Slater’s mom. Dylan’s mom was a hippie who used to drive him nuts. As you know, the mafia blew up Dylan’s dad and in the ensuing grieving period, Dylan met his “sister” as well as her mom (supposedly Dylan’s dad former wife) and her boyfriend. For a couple of episodes they formed a nice, tight little family unit. Turns out they were grifters (which Jim Walsh saw a mile away – so smart, that Jim Walsh) and stole every nickle from our hero. This pushed him further down the pit of despair until he went to Mexico, kicked a little ass and got his money back. Point: Dylan.

Work: These two lazy assholes never did an honest day’s work in their life. Dylan lived off his inheritance, Slater lived off his dimples. Point: no one.

Other Talents: Sometimes Slater would play the drums and sing in the Zack Attack or duet on cheesy 80s ballads with his special lady, Jessie or even dance. He was a true triple threat. Aside from complaining and sighing really loud, Dylan didn’t do anything but brood and try to look thoughtfully tortured. If Dylan was James Dean, Slater was Dean Martin. Point: Slater.

Clothes and Fashion: Along with Brandon, Dylan helped usher in a second golden-age of sideburns. As far as I can remember he didn’t wear anything out of the ordinary or embarrassing. Slater had an Eazy-E jheri curled mullet, and Parker Lewis shirts that were opened Larry Dallas style*. Like I said earlier, he wore Cavaricci pants and tank tops everywhere. I bet that he had a closet full of Gibaud jeans and probably wore Cross Colors. In other words, it was as if the MC Hammer’s closet threw up on him. Point: I guess it depends how you dressed, and while I will cop to owning a pair of Cavs, I did not own anything else. Dylan wins this round.

* How about that for a pop culture goulash: NWA’s Easy-E, Corin “Corky” Nemec aka Parker Lewis from TV’s “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” and Larry Dallas from “Three’s Company”? That’s some good eating, folks.

That’s about it folks, but before we get to the final count here’s something: if you were to have told me in 1993 that Mario Lopez would be more famous (and yes, this is debatable) than Luke Perry in 2013, I would have slapped you in the face – mostly because I couldn’t handle my alcohol when I was 19-years-old. But after I apologized and sobered up, I’d be surprised. But take heed Luke Perry, your character won this battle by a 6-5-2 score. Huzzah for you!

A Different Look at NWA

I think that when a song writer pens a song he has a certain audience in mind. For example, I doubt that when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote “Black Dog” they probably didn't think that there would be blasted at an old age home. Just like I doubt that Ice Cube didn't have in mind that a middle-aged man would be listening to “Fuck tha Police” mowing his lawn in a Massachusetts suburb.

But that's what happened a few weeks ago and that got me seriously thinking about NWA's (which stands for Niggas With Attitudes) seminal 1988 release “Straight Outta Compton”. When released, the album shocked the establishment with its frank descriptions of ghetto life—specifically that of Compton, CA—through misogynistic and violent rhymes. Made up of Ice Cube (Oshea Jackson), Eazy-E (Eric Wright), Dr. Dre (Andre Young), MC Ren (Lorenzo Patterson) and Yella Boy (Antoine Carraby), the group rapped about drug deals, police brutality and the utter hopelessness of life for a young, urban African-American.

While the album didn't spark controversy on it's initial release, it wasn't until suburban (read white) kids got their hand on the album that parents and the government started to take notice of the self-described “World's Most Dangerous Group”. Walking by their children's rooms or overhearing them talk about what was contained on the album, the establishment had a collective fit over songs like the aforementioned “Fuck tha Police”, “Straight Outta Compton” and “Gangsta Gangsta”. The FBI went as far as writing a letter to the group's record label, Ruthless/Priority/EMI demanding that the song be deleted from further album pressings and that the group not play the song during concerts.

Of course, this only increased the appeal of the group which prompted more record sales. One of those tapes was purchased by a young, white kid living in the most northern part of Massachusetts thousands of miles from Compton, California. I lived in a thoroughly middle-class neighborhood and while not lavishly wealthy, there wasn't much that I wanted for. My friends were the same way, yet there was something that we latched onto about NWA.

Aside from a few party bust-ups, we were never hassled by the police, no one was getting shot, the drug dealers at our school sold shake and stems and none of our girlfriends were performing fellatio on the dealers to get that. Looking back, it was a pretty bucolic life of playing sports, doing school work, drinking a few beers now and then and chasing girls. But we were 15 and 16-years-old and we needed something to rage against, and if it was raging against “normalcy” and boredom, then so be it. In any case, I wore that tape out listening to the tales of gang life over and over again.

But something happened from age 15 to 35; I grew up a bit (not too much) and gained a bit of perspective. Maybe it's because I've heard the songs so many time that I can recite the lyrics backwards, but now “Straight Outta Compton” doesn't sound like the tinder box or revolution as it does the unhappy bragging of the downtrodden.

The album opens with Ice Cube (who wrote nine of the 13 tracks) letting the audience know where he and his band are from. And make no mistake about it, these guys aren't having fun in the warm California sun. He paints the picture of an urban jungle where one has to use his wits in order to survive. This coupled with the two songs on the album (“Fuck tha Police” and “Gangsta, Gangsta”) show that the citizens of Compton are stuck in a vice. On one side there are their own people in gangs shooting up neighborhoods and on the other side are the people who have been sworn to protect and serve them, the Los Angeles Police Department. Both sides put an exorbitant amount of pressure on young people, which eventually causes them to pop.
Ice Cube couldn't run to the police when a gang banger shot up his neighborhood for two reasons:

1. He would be labeled as a snitch and would probably be killed
2. The cops don't care. They treat everyone in the ghetto the same.

This life has to be immensely frustrating. And that is what the theme of the album is about: life's constant frustrations and being powerless to stop them. That undercurrent of frustration is what makes this album excellent. It's not all bang-bang, shoot 'em, kill 'em all, mindless rapping. In order to survive and make a name Ice Cube and the other members (aside from Eazy-E, which I will discuss soon) have to separate themselves from their background, while also reminding everyone where they're from at the same time.

The members of NWA need to establish a larger-than-life persona in order to deal with every day life. This is done through new names that sound more like super heroes (Ice Cube, Dr. Dre) and through exaggerated song lyrics with language that mirrors their lives. Talk of beating and killing adversaries is an example of the “kill or be killed” way of life that rules the streets.

These crimes were being committed by “Ice Cube” or “MC Ren” not Oshea Jackson or Lorenzo Patterson. They were using their raps and their alter egos (pretty much all of their raps were said in the third-person) to speak out about the frustration in their lives and the violent acts that should be done to solve their problems.

“Fuck tha Police, Ren said with authority” (from “Fuck tha Police”)
“Crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube, from a gang called Niggas With Attitudes.” (from “Straight Outta Compton”)

These lyrics (and there are many more) suggest a form of separation between a person and his surrounding. I'm no psychologist, so I'm going to keep my five cent diagnosis.

While the dealing between person and environment were mostly third-person (often times words like “I” or “me” were used, however I feel that they were used to establish a rhythmic pattern) the dealings between the rapper and women were strictly single-person. On songs such as “I Ain't Tha One” and “Dopeman”, Ice Cube bears his soul—of course, it's under layers and layers of bravado, but if one looks they can see it.

Again, frustration is the name of the game as he muses that women don't want to him and his crew because they are too poor and have no status in the community. Every once in awhile a girl may look their way, but to Ice Cube and the others, the only reason why she is doing this is because she wants something.

“You want lobster? Huh. I'm thinking Burger King.” (from “I Ain't Tha One”)

While a funny line about opportunistic women, it belies a point from Ice Cube which is you shouldn't be dating me for what I can offer (expensive meals, cars, jewelry) you should be with me for who I am.

“Run out of money and yo, watch your heart break. She'll drop you like a bad habit.” (from “I Ain't Tha One”)

Realize that Ice Cube is not 80's, ghetto version of Dion (“Why Must I be a Teenager in Love?”). He is also out for one thing (and in the same song as the ones quoted above, he says, “I think with my ding-a-ling” and “After the date, I'm gonna want to do the wild thing”), but it can be argued that a. he is honest about what he expects b. class or money do not factor into his pursuits—though one could probably blame teenaged libido on that.

While I haven't spoken of tone in the album's raps, the ending of “I Ain't Tha One” does have a bit of sadness in it when Ice Cube realizes that this woman is only showing interest because she thought that he was wealthy. “You only wanted me for my money. Beat it.” is said with equal parts disdain and disappointment. It is one of the few times on the album where the speaker allows the listener to feel pity for him. This works well with the album's overarching theme of frustration.

Another song that deals with women is “Dopeman” however, this is only in a verse or two. Ice Cube and the group lament over the fact that they can not get any girls to look at them, but the dope man (the lowest of the low in the world of the ghetto—a man who literally poisons his community in order to get rich) has women fawning all over him. It's not because of the dope man's charms or wiles. It's because he has half the neighborhood addicted to his product and because of the poverty, women are willing to trade sexual favors for his wares.

As a young man whose teenage years were also a dry spell, one can do crazy things to get a girl. However, it seems that Ice Cube and the rest of NWA (aside from Eazy-E) would not lower themselves to the level of a drug dealer to get women. Having a conscious or some sort of moral compass in the ghetto makes the day-to-day life frustrating.

One can assume that the motivation of NWA was to leave the ghetto and become wealthy. To do this they essentially had to play both sides of the fence: claim the ghetto as their “home” (in order to maintain street credibility) and find a way to leave the ghetto where life would undoubtedly get easier. The dark secret of NWA is that when the album was released, the only member of NWA that had a police record was Eazy-E. He sold drugs in order to finance the group in the early years and was arrested by the polcie a few times.

It seems to me that despite their rap protestations, the members of NWA never wanted to be in a gang. They used the lot that was given to them (poverty, police brutality, gang violence) as a way to get themselves out of their lifestyle.

This is what I missed while listening to this album the first 800 or so times. And while I never could put my finger on why this album (which was essentially the blue print for the gangster rap explosion of the 1990s and beyond) was so much better than the other ones that came after it. It wasn't that it was the first album of the genre, it was the stuff that ran under the surface of the curses and bravado. There is a certain heart to this album, a certain raw-nerve feel that is way too tender to touch. And while I won't go so far as to say that there is a warmth to the record, there is an element there that imitators can't seem to get right.

The frustration of youth, the frustration of one's surroundings, the frustrations of life and being in a place that you desperately want to get away from bubbles to the top subliminally. People who look only at the surface will never get it correct because it really isn't what NWA said; it's more the themes that were between the lines and what they didn't.