Universal Pictures
Welcome to another edition of Movies to Watch, where we recommend titles for you to check out after you’ve caught the latest hot new theatrical release. These are not necessarily great movies, just essentials to make you better appreciate the one you just saw.
This week, that one would be Straight Outta Compton (if it’s not, then go out and see it because it’s pretty good and also because this list might include spoilers). It’s a sometimes standard music biopic about rap icons Ice Cube, Eazy-E and Dr. Dre and their group N.W.A., and therefore it easily reminds us of other notable entries in the genre — one scene involving multiple takes in the recording studio had me thinking of a similar moment in La Bamba, for instance, though it’s likely that’s just a common convention of movies like this. Not enough to be a relevant recommendation.
Below are 10 titles with various sorts of significance to Straight Outta Compton, whether tied to the subject matter or the filmmakers or actors. As usual, they’re roots-oriented, yet all of this week’s crop are less than 25 years old, meaning they all came out somewhere between the initial time period the new movie is set in and its release. And in tune with the Straight Outta Compton end-credits montage, they form a chronological narrative of the two decades since N.W.A.’s rise. Some of these selections are, admittedly, quite obvious, maybe just as quick reminders, but hopefully there is something here for you to branch off to and discover.
The Doors (1991)
Both The Doors and N.W.A. represent Los Angeles music of a certain point in time, and their respective biopics similarly focus on the place and those eras. There are a number of moments in Straight Outta Compton that had me recalling Oliver Stone‘s movie about Jim Morrison and his bandmates, but the Detroit concert scene, with its censorship request and police presence and ultimate arrest feels straight outta The Doors. But it’s surely not intentional (even if Compton is co-written by Andrea Berloff, who also wrote Stone’s World Trade Center), just a matter of there being an interesting real correlation of the times. Also interesting to consider in the comparison of the two movies is how the surviving members of The Doors hated Stone’s often-fictionalized dramatization of their history, while the surviving members of N.W.A. actually produced their story. And each has its own fascinating form of mythologizing going on as a result.
Boyz n the Hood (1991)
Even if you’ve already seen this drama, which marked the start of Ice Cube’s acting career and for which John Singleton became the youngest and first African-American person nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, it’s definitely worth revisiting after seeing Compton. Is it as great as you remember? Or is it just a glorified “after-school special with cussin'”? Eazy-E did really publicly criticize the movie with that phrase, as Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) references in the new movie. See the interview in the September 1991 issue of Spin magazine here.
CB4 (1993)
If you sat through Compton and got a sense of deja vu, but you weren’t exactly familiar with the true story of Eazy-E and company going into the thing, maybe you’ve just seen this comedy co-written by and starring Chris Rock. Much of the movie is a parody of N.W.A., particularly its fictional rap group’s hit song “Straight Outta Locash” and the music video for that track (see below). Eazy-E and Ice Cube even make cameos in the gangsta-rap satire, so like the actual biopic it obviously doesn’t hit hard enough.
Murder Was the Case (1994)
If you have any criticisms at all about the quality of movie Ice Cube and Dr. Dre produced alongside director F. Gary Gray, it’s worth seeing what their collaborations were like more than 20 years ago. While you’re really better off watching the first Friday, which we see Jackson-as-Ice Cube writing in a scene in Compton and which was Gray’s feature debut, this earlier short film (or is it better described as a longform music video?) is still necessary if only as a curious artifact. Directing credit goes to Dr. Dre, but Gray also helmed one of the music videos strung together to form a plot involving the death of Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he was listed as then). And Suge Knight, who was definitely not involved in the making of Compton (to the point that he angrily showed up on the set of a promo for the movie and allegedly killed someone while there), is an executive producer. Watch it in full below.
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