One thing that can’t be disputed is how many rappers past and present have chronicled injustices experienced by urban and African-American communities in the U.S. through their music. Few of them, however, have been as groundbreaking as N.W.A., the quintet who rhymed about the grim realities of their immediate, volatile surroundings. Formed in the late ’80s out of South Central Los Angeles, the group put the West Coast, specifically the city of Compton, on the map during what had been an East Coast-dominated hip-hop scene. While critics of their hardcore and vulgar lyrical content ranged from white politicians to conservative black community leaders, their message and meteoric rise, chronicled in Straight Outta Compton.

Straight Outta Compton is an explosively entertaining hip-hop biopic that raps home truths about race and police brutality as timely now as they were during the 1980s in Compton, California. The atmosphere is charged as cinematographer Matthew Libatique creates striking visuals that pull us into the fray. For me, the film’s righteous highlight is a Detroit concert where the cops threaten to jail the bandmates and shut the place down if they sing the rap that has demonized N.W.A to Middle America. Of course they sing it. And the crowd roars. The movie is never as potent as it is in that groundbreaking moment, when artists and audiences connect.

I throughly enjoyed watching Straight Outta Compton, especially at the Cornell Cinema, where Cornell’s very own BreakFree Hip Hop group put on a phenomenal performance to introduce the movie.