This is a drastically different kind of music than I am used to. I wanted it to be like this. I wrote my first blog about Taylor Swift’s new album so I could get a feel for what are the different things I could write about. The rest of the blogs have to be something different though. They have to be from artists and bands that I have never listened to and I probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for this assignment.

I texted my parents and I asked them to send me the name of an artist or band who is most controversial. Their responses were all about N.W.A. They replied to me with articles that raved about their reputation and how their dangerousness changed the music world. Prior to writing this, I heard of N.W.A. every once and a while either because a song was playing in the background of something. Two years ago, I even watched the Straight Outta Compton movie because my friend and I were randomly scrolling through a list of movies and it seemed interesting. It was an enjoyable movie and I would watch it again and it was a very interesting story to me.

I always love the stories that emphasize the power of one common interest bringing together a group of misfits. As long the movie and my memory of the movie are accurate, then this is the story is what I witnessed when watching this movie. Besides this message, seeing how the actors looked very similar to who they were portraying (like Ice Cube’s son plying Ice Cube) and hearing the one song I might have heard once before, “Straight Outta Compton,” it was a good movie. It was interesting to see their story and how these tough, never-back-down-from-a-fight guys went from being on the street to showing their personality off in the recording booth.

Ice Cube and His Son, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Billboard.com

Listening to N.W.A. was so fun for me this week. Whenever I played their songs on my phone, I found my head bobbing or my feet tapping. For some reasons more obvious than others, it was hard for me to maybe relate to their songs because we have no shared experiences whatsoever, but I found their rhythm, their rhymes, and their background tunes were what drew me to want to listen to them more. I went to Apple Music and I looked up N.W.A., knowing Apple usually has an “essential playlist” of every artist. “I Ain’t the 1” by N.W.A. (although it was mainly just Ice Cube rapping) was the first song to pop up. Although the rapping was slow, I appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to look up the lyrics to the song because Ice Cube uses the clearest diction I’ve ever heard in a rap song; it made me so happy that all of their songs were like this or almost this clear as well. I haven’t really enjoyed the rap music these days because of the lack of diction if I’m being honest. I don’t like the mumbling because it just doesn’t sound right. I believe that if you want to get your message across, you should make it as easy as possible for your followers to be able to understand that. I don’t even believe that the majority of rap music I hear from my friends these days even has messages in their songs (and you couldn’t understand them anyway)! What makes N.W.A. stand out for me is that they were passionate about what they were putting out there and they had a message, or messages that they wanted to portray to everybody.