Bleep

Universal Music Series reissues of classic hip-hop albums hits gold once more with this pressing of NWA’s brilliant ‘Straight Outta Compton’, the group’s debut album from 1988. It’s hard to imagine eight tracks which combine the same sense of seething disillusion, futuristic production, and public appeal achieved by NWA on this debut, which still sounds rough and dangerous 25 years after its release. The album’s opening three tracks are pumped full of molten anger, with Ice Cube coming out fighting on ‘Straight Outta Compton’ with the album barely into its first minute, and the incendiary ‘Fuck Tha Police’ reminding of an era when mainstream hip-hop felt like a political weapon.

Dr Dre and Dj Yella’s production on this seminal cut wrenches orchestral strings into Hitchcock-esque stabs, and manages to pack in unsettlingly beautiful sounds too, with washes of melancholy synths somehow finding a place within the chaos. ‘Gangsta Gangsta’ revels in a nihilistic violence which has much in common with punk or noise, with electro cowbells and a twanging guitar making for an intriguingly persuasive combination. With this firey album nonetheless containing moments of real soul, notably in its brass sampling on ‘Express Yourself’, revisiting it now reminds of its depth and subtlety, despite its challenging lyrical content.