Straight Outta Compton
It was work of finding what sound people who are so vivid on stage make when they step away from it and are alone.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The makers ⏳🌊
- ComposerJoseph Trapanese
Focusing on finding the characters' voices outside rap, he wrote the score with restraint.
- DirectorF. Gary Gray
He directed the film on the strength of long-standing trust built working with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre.
- LeadO'Shea Jackson Jr.
He played Ice Cube, his real-life father.
- LeadCorey Hawkins
He played Dr. Dre.
- LeadJason Mitchell
Played Eazy-E.
- LeadPaul Giamatti
Played the manager, Jerry Heller.
I. Carrying the voice of the street
(Direction) Straight Outta Compton is a biopic about the formation and breakup of N.W.A, the hip-hop group founded in Compton, California, in 1987. Director F. Gary Gray had worked with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre for years on music videos and films, and on the strength of that trust he completed a script that reads very nearly like the principals' own testimony. (Composer) The original score was written by Joseph Trapanese. He regarded finding the characters' voices outside the language of rap as his greatest task — the score's job was to say what people so clear-spoken onstage sound like when they leave the stage and are alone. (Role) The film's music falls into two layers. One is the recordings that N.W.A and the artists around them actually made — source music that pours out of radios, car speakers and club stages within the story, music the characters can hear too. The other is the underscore Trapanese lays in wherever the dialogue stops and a character sinks into private thought. (Companionship) Dr. Dre took part in the recording sessions in person. Trapanese also handled the string arrangements and conducting for Dre's album Compton during the same period, so the film and the record were made side by side in one studio.
II. Morning in Compton
(Street) The film opens in 1986 at a drug deal in Compton. A heavy speaker sits in the trunk of Eazy-E's car, and its sound fills the neighborhood until the moment a police armored vehicle bears down — the music arrives first, and the event follows behind it. (Daily life) In Dr. Dre's room, a different grain of sound is flowing. As he sits at the turntable choosing rhythms, his mother nags him to find a job. Even within a single neighborhood, music serves different purposes — for one person a livelihood, for another a talent not yet recognized. (School commute) On the school bus, Ice Cube writes lyrics in his notebook. The pop on the radio, drifting out with no relation to the view through the window, is out of tune with the air of this neighborhood, and that mismatch only sharpens the edge of the words he is writing down. (Genesis) In the days when the three made music each in their own corner, there was not yet a name for a group. The music of this chapter introduces the characters while telling us in advance why they could not help but gather into a single voice.
Placed early in the film, at the point where Eazy-E's voice first comes to the fore. The song murmurs its tales of the street in a level tone, showing right away what kind of delivery this rapper has.
- The monotonous repeating beat of the intro locks together with a rap that comes close to narration, recounting events.
- This manner of listing events without exaggeration is regarded as the prototype of the understated tone the whole group would later share.
- The lo-fi texture of the recording is itself a record of the production conditions they had at the time.
III. A night at Dooto's Club
(Stage) At Dooto's Club, Ice Cube throws his own lyrics from the stage for the first time. The crowd's reaction is fierce, and the rhythm of that moment becomes the prototype of the songs they will later finish in the studio. (Formation) With Eazy-E, Dre and Cube joining hands, Ruthless Records is founded. Manager Jerry Heller comes aboard, and the voice of the street begins to be translated into the language of an industry: contracts and studio booking sheets. (Declaration) The heart of this chapter is the making of the song that bears the group's name. A structure in which short, repeated shouts sit atop a rough, low bass resembles the very way they set out to prove themselves. (Temperature) Before they collide head-on with the outside world, the music is full of confidence and swagger. The songs of this chapter ring out without knowing the weight of the clashes to come.
The title track and the group's declaration. In the film, the making of this song is itself a scene in the drama.
- The intro, opening with short, rough shouts, pulls the listener straight into the middle of things without explanation.
- The arrangement, in which the three members trade off a line at a time, lets us hear that this is a group made not of one voice but of three distinct ways of speaking.
- The title of this song went on to become the title of the film, and then a phrase that points to an entire era.
A song thrown before an audience for the first time from the stage of Dooto's Club. The cheers in that room decide their next steps.
- The rhythm, which seems to walk at a leisurely pace, backs up the ease and confidence of the lyrics.
- The structure, with long verses running on and no chorus, is cited as an example of rap music at the time moving away from chorus-centered form.
- The rhythm of an old funk recording brought in as a sample forms the backbone of the whole song.
An optimistic track written by Ice Cube and sung by Dr. Dre, placed where one catches one's breath between declarations of anger.
- The arrangement, which brings in a funk sample in a bright tone, stands clearly apart in mood from the other songs on the same album.
- As a song that sets out to show a message can be delivered without profanity, it lets us hear that the group did not have only one voice.
IV. What happened in Torrance
(Crackdown) Outside a studio in Torrance, police approach the members who have stepped out from recording. The scene in which, under the pretext of checking identification, they are made to lie face down and the food in their hands is knocked away was taken from what they actually went through. (Lyric-writing) From that humiliation comes the first line of the song. The lyrics Ice Cube writes after returning to the studio are a process of refining anger and taking aim, and the finished song puts in its title words that no mainstream record of the time would utter. (Repercussions) The fact that after the song's release the FBI sent an open letter to the record company hangs over the film like a shadow. This chapter is the point at which music moves beyond street experience and faces a state institution. (Choice) At this point Trapanese's score almost holds its breath. Because the recorded song is already a statement large and clear enough, the underscore steps back so as not to obscure it.
A song that links to the moment the humiliation suffered in Torrance becomes lyrics. In the film, it is heard as a finished song right after the recording-studio scene.
- It is structured as an imaginary courtroom trial, with each member speaking in turn as if taking the witness stand.
- Sound effects reminiscent of sirens recur, making the song itself sound like a piece of location sound.
- It is widely known for the FBI letter sent to the record company right after its release, which shows that this song became an event rather than a mere track.
V. Detroit, and the parting of ways
(Warning) Before the Detroit concert, the police flatly tell them not to perform that song onstage. The members do not obey, and the moment the music sounds, the tension between audience and stage erupts. (Chaos) In this scene, which leads into arrests and unrest, the music does not explain the events. Rather, the places where the song stops — moments close to a silence in which sirens and shouts blur together — say more. (Fracture) As success piles up, distrust over contracts and shares grows within the group as well. Ice Cube leaves first, and the distance from those who remain steadily widens. (Retort) A diss track aimed at former comrades spreads over the radio. The irony of people who shared the same studio and the same sense of the beat now firing lyrics at one another is captured in full inside this song.
The reply Ice Cube aimed at his old bandmates after leaving the group. In the film it sits at the point where the wound of the breakup shows most sharply.
- Calling out his targets one by one over the same beat and firing back at them is regarded as the archetype of the song form built to answer an opponent.
- Because it takes a sound once made in the same studio and throws it back, friendship and estrangement can be heard layered over the same melody.
VI. The sound flowing again
(Reunion) With time, a scene arrives in which those who once turned their backs on one another gather in the same place again. The music does not erase the old enmity, yet it returns to the sound they once made together. (Foreshadowing) The new track Dr. Dre completes alone tells us in advance that he is leaving the group and crossing into the next era. The once-razor-sharp beat grows more unhurried, and within that ease lies the signature of the next chapter. (Farewell) The film finally heads toward its darkest place. What the music does in that passage I will not reveal here, for those who have not yet seen it. I will say only that the sound flowing after that scene holds the temperature of the whole film longest. (Aftershock) Near the end credits, the group's original track steps to the front once more. That the beat still sounds familiar after nearly thirty years is, in the end, what this film set out to prove.
After the group has broken up, the film's final stretch follows with the track in which Dr. Dre opens the next era.
- The lazily stretching synthesizer melody contrasts sharply with the aggressive texture of the earlier N.W.A tracks.
- Locking in with a new voice, this track shows through music that as one era ends, another is beginning.
- From this track onward, Dr. Dre's career as a producer changed the course of popular music history, and its starting point is held in this scene.
Lesser-known stories
What happened outside the Torrance studio may look like cinematic exaggeration, but the same account is confirmed in the recollections left by Jerry Heller, the manager at the time, during his lifetime. Since police really did make the members, who had stepped out for a break from recording, lie face down on the ground, that scene is close to a faithful reenactment. The arrest scene after the Detroit show was dramatically reworked. It is shown as though they were dragged straight off the stage, but according to reports and testimony from the time, the actual arrest took place after the show ended and they had returned to the hotel. The film, in effect, moved the peak of tension onto the stage. The open letter the FBI sent to the record label Priority Records after the song's release was reported one after another by major dailies at the time and stirred controversy. A rare case of the music industry colliding head-on with a state agency, it ended up making the group's name even more widely known. At the Sony Pictures studio where the score sessions were held, work on the film music and on Dr. Dre's solo album went on at the same time. The fact that Trapanese conducted both the film score and the string arrangements for Dre's album shows that this work's music was not confined to a single film but was interlocked with record-making in the same period.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Diegetic music (source music)
The word "diegetic" comes from the Greek diegesis ("telling a story"). Within it lies the meaning of sound that the characters in the drama can hear too. (In film·musical music) It refers to music that comes from a radio or is played directly on stage, music the characters in the story hear as well. Just as the whole class hears the song the teacher puts on in the classroom, source music is music that the characters on screen and the audience hear at the same time.
Underscore (background music)
The English under and score (the written music) are joined, giving the meaning of music laid beneath a scene. (In film·musical music) It is music that the characters cannot hear and only the audience can, conveying emotion or tension without dialogue. The moment when nothing is happening on screen in a frightening scene, yet the music alone unsettles you, is exactly what background music does.
Leitmotif (guiding motif)
It combines 導 ("to lead") with 動 ("to move") · 機 ("frame, mechanism"), meaning a short melody that leads a certain character or idea around. The word comes from the German Leitmotiv. (In film·musical music) It is a device in which the same short melody sounds whenever a particular character or event appears, so that you know whose story it is from the melody alone. It is like a particular sound effect playing every time a certain friend shows up.
Diss track
The word is "diss," short for "disrespect" (the opposite of the English respect), with "track" (a song) attached. (In film·musical music) It refers to a song that directly targets a specific person in its lyrics to criticize or hit back at them. It is used especially often in hip-hop. It is as if the verbal bickering between friends had been moved into the form of a song.
Sampling
(In film·musical music) A technique of taking part of previously recorded music and reusing it within a new track. Like a collage made by cutting and pasting old photographs into a new work, sampling cuts a fragment from an old recording and pastes it into a new song. (Elsewhere) In science and statistics it is also used in the sense of "taking a sample," drawing a part from the whole to examine.
Cue
(In film·musical music) A term for each individual piece of music making up the score of a single film. A new cue begins each time the scene changes. Just as an actor backstage receives a signal to enter when a particular line is spoken, a composer too builds a cue to match the signal that this music comes in at this scene.