Guest blogger: Xavier R1

In 1988, with the double-platinum album Straight Outta Compton, N.W.A brought gangsta rap into the mainstream. The record was among the first to give an insider's perspective of the violence and brutality of gang infested South Central L.A. with songs like "F*** tha Police" and "Gangsta Gangsta" witch have the loud noise of sirens and gunshot sounds, it also foreshadowed the 1992 L.A. riots. In 1986, O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson, who was more interested in music and books than in gangs met Andre "Dr. Dre" Young, who shared Cube's passion for writing rap songs. The two started writing for Eric "Eazy-E" Wright, a former drug dealer who started Ruthless Records with his profits. Eazy needed material for a group he'd signed to the label, HBO. When HBO rejected Cube and Dre's song "Boyz-n-the-Hood," about the South Central town of Compton, Eazy-E decided to record the song himself and the three started working together as N****z With Attitude (N.W.A). The critics of NWA have said that they are a bad influence to their audience and promote violence and the resist of authority. I would agree and disagree with these statements. They do talk about violence in their songs which may give the impression that it is cool or that it solves problems, but in all the interviews with the members they will say that they never wanted to promote violence among their listeners they just wanted to let their fans into their own life. When you listen to an NWA song that’s exactly what you get the music is very real and paints a great picture in your mind. To me that is what music is all about it is to get you thinking and it’s a way to communicate how you feel. NWA does this better than any other artist out there to me and that is exactly why I think that it is well worth it to listen to their music even if you are not a fan of rap music. You get another prospective of what is going on in the world other then the media telling you that there is a bunch of hostile people on the west coast that are disrespecting authority.