Last Sunday, I saw the movie Straight Outta Compton at the Cornell Cinema. The movie, which was co-produced by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, tells the origin story of the rappers of N.W.A., their rise to fame and their fall-out.

The movie goes beyond chronicling their many accomplishments as it details their tumultuous lives. For N.W.A. music was intertwined with their own life stories. When a reporter asks why their music “glorifies” gang violence, a young Ice Cube retorts, “our art is a reflection of our reality”. This is a central tenant of the group, who changed the rap scene with their candid expression of Compton city life. The film tackles deep issues such as the police brutality and the AIDS crisis. The movie came out in the midst of a national discussion about race and police brutality. Several times throughout the movie, the footage of LAPD beating Rodney King plays on TV screens which seems eerily similar to today’s media playing footage of the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and other black citizens at the hands of police. The officers charged in the Rodney King case were later acquitted similar to the cases of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice where the court failed to indict the officers involved despite the fact that all these instances were caught on camera. It’s disheartening that so little has changed in the past few decades and that police brutality is a common daily occurrence. The phrase “F—k Tha Police” from Ice Cube’s song, written in response to police harassment, was a rallying cry during the 1992 LA riots and we see it written on walls in the midst of the chaos. In a particularly poignant moment, two members of rival gangs stand united, joining their red and blue bandanas as they stand against the police. This reminded me of a recent moment after the death of Freddie Gray in which rival gang members in Baltimore also came together to protect their communities.

However, for all their talent and all they did to shed light on the realities of police brutality, the rappers of N.W.A. were not without their faults. The film is rife with misogyny and a common criticism of the film was the lack of acknowledgment of the acts of violence and abuse Dr. Dre committed against the women in his life. However, this wasn’t a story about angelic heroic leaders of a civil rights movement but about the real-life stories of flawed human beings with a powerful message to share with the world, a message that still rings true today.