Engaging 'Compton' chronicles controversial rappers' rise

“Straight Outta Compton,” a drama about the rap group N.W.A., boasts instant audience appeal.

Longtime admirers of the Los Angeles ensemble, who helped create West Coast gangsta rap with their confrontational lyrics and defiant, physically aggressive performance, will surely flock to this long-awaited chronicle of the band's swift rise.

But “Compton” deserves a much wider reach. Thanks to eerily on-point timing and adroit direction from F. Gary Gray, this classic star-is-born story manages to transcend its own tight focus.

Even viewers who think N.W.A. is an airline will likely be electrified by a story that, while succumbing to its share of hagiography, still puts its subjects in context as avatars, not just of their time and place, but of our own. As the film makes clear, the unfiltered rage that got the band into so much trouble — with parental groups, federal authorities, radio stations and censorious social critics — had its roots in grim realities that are all too palpable today.

The story begins in the mid-1980s, when South-Central Los Angeles was awash in crack cocaine, gang violence and the battering rams and helicopter searchlights of the city's overzealous police department. With the help of on-screen titles, the audience is introduced to the three main players in N.W.A.'s formation and eventual success: Eric Wright (Jason Mitchell), a scrappy, bantamweight dealer at the lower level of the drug trade; O'Shea Jackson (O'Shea Jackson Jr.), a high school student who writes rhymes on the school bus; and Andre Young (Corey Hawkins), a producer friend of Jackson's who DJs at a local club.

These three would later become famous as Eazy-E, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who along with Dre's original partner DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) and later MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) formed what would be known as N.W.A., an abbreviation for the group's less printable full name.

Young, green and volatile, these natural writers, performers and producers are portrayed as creatures of spontaneous instinct rather than crass calculation or cynicism. When Eazy-E joins forces with a manager named Jerry Heller, the more seasoned showman immediately sees lightning ripe for bottling. Heller happens to be played by Paul Giamatti, and as anyone who's seen “Love & Mercy” knows, when he shows up in a musical biopic, it doesn't bode well.

The film is wildly entertaining as the members of N.W.A. go from neighborhood heroes to bona fide stars, selling out arenas and alarming older, mostly white, listeners appalled at their songs. Perhaps most important, Gray has assembled a pitch-perfect cast to portray the band, including Ice Cube's real-life son, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the bearish, scowling rapper.

In addition to writing and performing, Ice Cube's scenes mostly pivot around him asking Heller and Eazy-E — with increasing suspicion — about such nagging issues as compensation, contracts and what look like secretive side deals. Meanwhile, a bearded, physically imposing acquaintance of Dre's named Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor) begins to lurk in the background.

Ice Cube's contract disputes and Dre's association with Knight would ultimately spell the end of N.W.A., which “Straight Outta Compton” illustrates, dutifully and to a fault, along with the AIDS to which Eazy-E succumbed in 1995. After a lively, engrossing, often funny first hour or so, the film begins to feel repetitive, baggy and bogged down — even with such delicious details as Dre discovering Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur, and Ice Cube fooling around with a little script called “Friday.”

That little side project would prove to be his breakout role (directed, incidentally, by Gray). Yet “Straight Outta Compton” never addresses, much less questions, the misogyny embedded in so much of N.W.A.'s lyrics. Perhaps not surprisingly for a film produced by Ice Cube, Dre and Eazy-E's widow, the subjects are portrayed as flawed but well-intentioned family men and visionary artists.

Simply as a rags-to-riches story, “Straight Outta Compton” would be an engaging ride through a storied chapter of pop culture — helped considerably by its impressive ensemble of promising young actors. But the film gains meaning and emotional heft from its context: in this case, a time period bracketed by the over-policing of South Central and the beating of Rodney King and subsequent riots.

There's no doubt that N.W.A.'s stage persona was just that — a collective pose of bravado and affected, overcompensating swagger. But the film deftly illustrates the forces that pushed the group and their colleagues to strike those poses, and why they were so valorized for pushing back, at least symbolically.

N.W.A.'s music might have fused seamlessly with the larger youth culture's sense of rebellion. But there's no doubt that their outrage was specific, personal and, as Gray depicts it, acutely socially aware. As enlightening as it is entertaining, as sobering as it is exhilarating, “Straight Outta Compton” reminds viewers not only who N.W.A. were, but why they mattered — and still do.

“Straight Outta Compton”

★ ★ ★

<b>Starring:</b> O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Paul Giamatti, Aldis Hodge, Neil Brown Jr., R. Marcos Taylor

<b>Directed by:</b> F. Gary Gray

<b>Other:</b> A Universal Pictures release. Rated R for language, sexual situations, nudity, violence and drug use. 147 minutes