A Rant About Straight Out of Compton

I remember the whispers back in 1988 when N.W.A first came out. I was living in extremely segregated Seattle, and white kids were beside themselves listening to Straight out of Compton. Giggling and saying the N word along with the record. The local feminists were up in arms because  they use the words bitch and ho liberally and they were pissed that they talked about women like this.

Why are you so mad? They aren't talking about white women. They are talking about black women. Black women in their day to day lives. I got tired of 'hearing about' this record, I needed to hear it and judge for myself.

I didn't expect it to be clever, and honest, and full of rage. The rage that all black people in the hood felt. I didn't expect to be charmed by verses about dope dealing and gang banging. White kids wanted to engage me in conversation about this album, not because they were interested in my opinion about anything. It was as if they had ripped the covers off a family secret and now had some 'dirt' on me and my family and wanted to see me feel uncomfortable or ashamed. They wanted me to feel upset that NWA called me a bitch and a ho. 

Not happening. 

I am a black woman, yes. Defending NWA as a black woman seems crazy. Yes. However, here we are again with a biopic about black men who were not perfect saints. Just like all of the biopics before them, they are flawed humans, that occasionally made bad decisions. James Brown was famous for his temper and beating women. Ray Charles cheated on his wife. Frankie Lymon had several wives at once. We remember Mike Tyson going to prison because he didn't hear the word no when a young beauty queen told him to stop. Tu Pac also got dragged into court because a young lady was uncomfortable with what went on in his hotel room. Kobe Bryant....the list goes on. Except for Kobe's accuser all the women who were hurt were black. 

It seems as if black women are collateral damage when it comes to famous black men. However I guess in NWAs case because they rap about it, honestly; it makes them irrelevant to be celebrated in any way shape or form. The behavior they describe on record is clearly predatory, coercive and violent. Is it fantasy or autobiography we wonder. If it bothers you, then don't listen to it. It's that simple. There are NWA songs I like a lot, and songs I will fast forward through. But as a whole because I fast forward through songs that I don't like to listen to, that makes the body of their work invalid?

Lets face it. Hip Hop culture will always be a boys club. It will always be centered around maleness, and it's prowess. Women will always be either prizes to be collected, and traded. Or something to be caged for their own desires. If a woman protests or declines she becomes a 'bitch'. I can't count the times in my life having been approached by a black man I wasn't interested in for obvious reasons. In case you don't know what that means, it means he was too street for me. The moment I said no thanks, I was called out of my name and "You ain't all that anyway!" The moment he can't have me, it's operation tear down. It's a systematic knee jerk reaction for some men. However I have told every race of man no thank you. But it's only black men that turn on me. Is it because they feel entitled to me?

When the casting call for women for the NWA movie came out, all hell broke loose. With women being put into categories of A, B, C or D. A class women were Beyonce' look alikes or white women. Of course going down the letters, skin tones get darker and body types get bigger. On the D list were hood girls. The girls that grew up next door to them. The D list girls were most likely their actual fans. Girls they saw at school everyday. 

Watching the film, I remembered the list; and saw how it played out on film. All the women who would go to the parties at mansions in their bikins, some walking around topless. Is this just fiction for the movies, or did this actually happen. I'm pretty sure it really went down like that. Are there women who show up to parties and take their tops off? YEP. Are their women who have sex with rappers just because they are rappers? YEP. Don't get what I am saying twisted and read into it that I am saying because they show up at a party then whatever happens to them is their own fault or okay because the men throwing the party are famous. At some point a woman has to understand what she is dealing with, and act accordingly.  Much of the time we aren't talking about women who even know their worth in the first place. In the crowd their are women who think if they get pregnant by one of the guys they will be on easy street. Women who see children as a paycheck. But when the rapper raps about this kind of woman, we get all upset. It's HIS reality. 

The things we get pissed about are so much bigger than a rapper. It's a culture. It's a construct created not by us, that we have to exist in the best way we know how.  Yes, men are given a pass when they are famous. To behave anyway they want to, do what they want, say what they want without recourse. Black women in this case are the collateral damage in this case. Some people feel like NWA climbed over black women to achieve what they did, and abandon us when the money arrived. The current outcry (since the film has been released) is the omission of the domestic violence that DRE was a part of. His beating of TV show host Dee Barnes, as well as his ex Mi'chelle. I watched Mi'chelle unravel on reality TV and say that she was suicidal. She didn't go into detail about why. This is a woman who has a child by DRE and a child by SUGE Knight. These two men are notorious for their own reasons. I can't imagine what she had to live through. I pray for her, that she gets the healing she needs to overcome any hurt she suffered, and thrive.

The dialogue becomes clear, if these women would have been included in the film, they would also have to had been paid for the use of their likeness. Why would the group shoot themselves in the foot like this? Besides once you add that element, it becomes a movie about DRE and not NWA. I am not dismissing the violence at all. Just saying that, there are other less public ways to deal with this issue. Not sweep it under the rug. Just have some dignity, and deal with it in a way that doesn't depend on public opinion to vindicate you.

Hip hop once we hit the late 1980's took a turn for the mysogynistic worse. Too Short, Too Live Crew and the like made their careers off of sex raps. It was a fact of life at that point if you went to a party or a club, eventually you would hear some sexually explicit, insulting male fantasy. I took to sitting down for these songs. As if you were out there shaking your tail along to it, you were pretty much saying ' come and get it guys, I'm that chick.' But Luke and Short were only doing what Redd Foxx and the like were doing in the 1960s in their comedy routines. Black women are no strangers to hearing explicit scenes of what black men want to do to us. Even back to the blues people sang 'blue' songs that were explicit sex tales. But suddenly NWA hates women. This has been going on for a hundred years, but I guess because they have a smash hit movie 27 years after the lyrics were written there is an outrage. Because people went to the film in droves, that is seen as condoning violence against women. 

Interestingly enough, none of these explicit sex raps were in the film. The concentration was on eff the police, and their first hits " Boyz in the Hood" and "Dopeman". But still people are bent out of shape about stuff these guys wrote in their youth. Can you imagine what YOUR life would be like if today someone came at you about something you did when you were 19? The stupid crap you said and did? The question is did the mentality and behavior continue? OR did you grow up and out of it?

People are crying about how black women are being screwed and murdered in a fantasy world on a record. Are you this mad about them being treated this way in real life? Are you part of a movement to protect and educate girls and women about making safe choices in real life? Or mentoring young boys, and educating them on NO meaning NO.

NO? hmmmm

As black people we have a habit of wanting to point fingers and blame someone or something for our quality of life. It's much easier to be mad at a movie, than it is to take action in our community to stop women from being ground up in the machine that is mysogeny. What happens when girls grow up in this culture... You get women who grow up to be Nikki Minaj. The one successful black female rapper / pop artist, has been captured at Madame Toussads wax museum, on all fours, ass in the air. Nikki herself has shot herself full of silicone to become this black male fantasy doll. Then willingly spends most of her day bent over for the camera, but can't seem to understand why no one takes her seriously. She also takes a video of an intimate moment with her boyfriend, featuring her fake bottom, and posts it on line for the world to see. When people comment 'enough already' they are branded haters. If someone tells you to have some cooth, class and dignity about yourself, they are a "hater". This is the mentality this culture produces. 

You can't have it both ways. Walk around naked all day long, then get mad when someone sexually harasses you. Take some responsibility for YOUR part in it.

There are people all over FB saying they refuse to see the film because NWA promotes mysogeny. Ok, then don't. Here's a response I had to one person.

Don't you mean they aren't revolutionary, they sold out? I understand this rather long rant, with a pouty 'I'm not going to see the film' at the end. That is your perogative, no one is forcing you to watch a movie about NWA. Back when they came out , people were whining the same way. I took it upon myself to not take someone elses word for it and listen to it for myself. I am a diehard fan of conscious rap. Tribe Called Quest is my favorite group of all time. I sat down and listened to NWA on my own. The things they said were shocking at the time. No one else had managed to say what they were saying. I sat back and went on a tour of the hood, in detail. A daily life, dealing with a life that offers few choices to stay alive. The writing was brutal, and uncomfortable. I think that was the whole point. To make people uncomfortable. To tell the truth about the ugliness of their lives. The ugliness of how black women are used and abused. The reality of living in a gang infested neighborhood and your chances of surviving. If you had seen the film, and since you aren't Ill give you a spoiler. There is a scene where there is a press conference. A reporter asks if they are glamorizing selling crack and gang life. None of them were in a gang, and none of them own a passport or an airplane. Professor X rapped about 'burning the crack house down' the flipside was NWA. So according to your rant, Professor X's voice is valid and NWAs is not. So it's ok for black people to live though genocide, just not write about it, and definately not over a fly beat. Tu Pac wrote 'Brenda Had A Baby' which is also about a young girl being raped. Is it because it wasn't a banger that that song doesn't make your blood boil? Angel Haze raps about being raped herself, do we shut her up too? Where does it stop? So negro suffering is fine as long as you don't drop a dope beat and sell a million records. GOT IT.

Dope- Alt black movie?

Dope is the film I was waiting months for. I couldn't wait to see this movie about blerds who were into 90's hip hop. I keep reading blurbs and seeing song lists and felt like finally alt black film will have arrived.

Well, it kinda did.

The film takes place in present day Inglewood California. The first thing that caught me off guard was the use of the N word at nauseum. It could nearly be a period at the end of a sentence. Could have really done without it. I thought it would have been forward thinking to have our heroes reject the use of it on principal. But no such luck.

The most irritating moment of course is when their 'white friend' wants to know why he can't say it. He is angry he can't say it. The two guys give in and tell him he can say it, the female is still adamant he cannot. He says it in front of her, and she slaps him silly, saying ' it was just a reflex '. It's a funny moment. But it doesn't stop him from using the word. More sinister afterward he is with other white friends saying it. He doesn't get it and never will. Teachable moment, epically failed.

Our heroes are a black kid,Malcolm; a black lesbian, Diggy;  and a kid that remains racially unidentifiable named Jib, for the entire film. Was that supposed to be edgy, or was it just lazy on the part of the writer? Oh we can't have ALL the lead characters be black. Then we will lose our white audience.

Which comes to my main issue.

It seems this film was made 'for white kids to enjoy'. Yes, of course black kids who open themselves up to other music, movies, social scenes are accused of wanting to 'be white' by other black counterparts for doing so. HOWEVER, when I watch and listen carefully to the way these kids communicate, the choices they make and the mode of expression; it is in fact that they have been completely bled of their natural born swag and taken on the personas of suburban white kids. When they attend a party for the local drug dealer, the scenes are those of house parties we see in John Hughes films when white kids trash everything in sight with no fear of recourse or any respect for whomever's place they are visiting. 

Zoe Kravitz character Nakia serves you Denise Huxtable 2.0. Which  was a little creepy but not in a completely bad way. Of course the local drug dealer has a crush on her as does our hero Malcolm, what is a blerd to do? She wears crop tops and skimpy cutoffs, and seems confident even though her character is studying for her GED. There isn't really any back story on her, which makes me a little annoyed. The only other female lead is Lily played by Chanel Iman, who is a black version of the bored, rich vapid white girl we see in every teen movie. She makes herself sexually available the moment she comes on screen, and is naked for most of her screen time; which I found a little unnerving. Chanel has made a name for herself in the modeling world. Not just as a black model, but a model period. Then she takes this role and sort of undoes all that hard work in a few minutes on screen. Ugh.

Our hero Malcolm has the grades to get into Harvard, and has scheduled an interview with a local alum. The night before at the party the drug dealer stuffs his school backpack with drugs to hide and sends him on his way. The story twists and turns, and it's up to Mally Mal to turn said drugs (which happen to be Molly this time around, not coke, weed or heroin like in hood movies.) into cash or else.

So I sat thinking, so we're doing this? We're having the black kid who's on his way to Harvard deal drugs? You can kiss my whole ass with that. Is this the only story line that is available for black kids? I thought we were moving past that? 

The writer tries to put a fresh cyber heist take on the whole thing, having them deal on line using a pay pal like service, and then hacking into the bad guys accounts so it traces back to him so they don't get pinched. Ha ha clever. But still a movie about black kids dealing drugs to get out of the ghetto.

There are some quoteable moments. The 'hard c' conversation is an entertaining intellectual maze that will definitely be repeated at parties. The backtracking scenes in slow motion added comedy to the story telling which was very fun to watch. The end credits when every single dance of the 1990s is done one after the other made me laugh and cringe. (did we used to dance like that in public? OH MY GOD!!) This film wasn't made for black kids, the way FRIDAY was. This film was clearly made to appeal to suburban white kids. 

You got me.
But I'll keep waiting for my alt black feature film.

La Mission

La Mission is an interesting indy film about an old school cholo father living in the Mission district of SanFrancisco with his teenage son. Not to get all spoilerific on you or anything but his son is homosexual and in a relationship with someone, and is hiding it from his very macho father. The father is played by one of the most delicious actors in the world Benjamin Bratt. They live in a giant victorian house that has been turned into apartments. Their neighbor is a lady Lena played by Erica 'Maxine from Living Single' Alexander. She is an organic, natural haired, bicycle riding earth mama that is trying her best to fit into the predominantly Latin neighborhood.

Benjamin's character Che is an ex con who now drives a bus and works on lowriders in his free time. He belongs to an old school car club that goes crusing to the oldies every Friday night. They meet up with other car clubs under the bridge and chill and listen to music and dance. It's a pretty mello life he lives, until he finds evidence of his son's relationship and confronts him about it. Naturally he cannot cope and father and son are on the outs. Lena gets caught in the middle of the mele' and is a catalyst for Che's understanding of his son. The change takes a long time to happen. Lena and Che begin something very sweet and refreshing to see on screen. I liked that he was genuinely attracted to her though she was nothing like him. There was a sweetness between them that was wonderful to see. Lena holds a mirror to Che to force him to look at himself, and doesn't allow him to bullshit his way out of things. This film has some complex issues that aren't sugar coated or swept under the table. The script does a great job of getting everything out, and showing Che's transformation into an unconditionally loving father. Great film making. More please.

Knight & Day

Knight & Day is one of those big budget action movies with big name stars that you pretty much go into having the entire thing mapped out in your head before your booty even hits the seat and the first kernel of popcorn is ingested. However this film surpassed any preconceived ideas that I had about it’s entertainment value. Tom plays Roy Miller, a Cheshire grinning super shady ‘agent like’ character that keeps accidentally bumping into June, (played by Cameron Diaz) in the airport. Well we all know when that goes down there’s some sort of exchange taking place, it’s just a question of what that we wait around for. June gets bumped from her flight and Roy comments as he gets on the plane ‘Some things happen for a reason.’ June eventually gets on the plane and seats herself in Roy’s vicinity to get her flirt on. When she gets up to go to the bathroom is when all hell breaks loose. She comes back, and Roy tries to clue her in on the mêlée that has happened whilst she was in dispose, and she believes he’s only kidding with her, until she sees that no one is flying the plane. The action takes off like a shot. Our couple manages to not die in a fiery plane crash, while they are escaping the wreck in a corn field, Roy explains to June that the bad guys are coming after her and this is what they will say. Don’t trust them no matter what, oh and drink this to take the edge off. She does and it’s lights out for her. She wakes up in her own bed in her own house…somehow.

The next day her sort of boyfriend, seeing on TV that the plane she was on crashed was worried and came by to see if she ever made it home. They go out for breakfast and she tries to explain Roy to him, when Roy shows up at the diner to kidnap her; and off we go again. This time on a wild car chase on the highway with the bad guys with some of the craziest stunts ever. They kept it fresh somehow with the silliness of the situations, and June’s panicking about the situation like a normal person would given the circumstances. She’s just priceless. You can see her getting a little crushy crush on Roy boy, and you wonder when it’s all going to come to a head. Little by little Roy feeds her information on a need to know basis, however when he isn’t around; the bad guys are grabbing June up and telling her the opposite so she doesn’t know who to believe. The film does a good job with not overwhelming you with information right away, and keeping you in the dark along with our girl June. You think you are putting the pieces together and you know who the bad guys are; then you aren’t quite right. This movie has delightful twists, and fantastic heart pulsing action. Cruise plays Roy’s ‘rogue’ just right, so you feel for the guy and wonder how he’s going to get out of this alive.

Yes, the film does have all the core elements, things blowing up, car chases, cool gadgets, lots of bad guys, exotic locales and punch lines; but it’s so fast and furious that you are caught up in the fun before you realize you are watching a formula. But this formula works like a charm.

What if you could know the exact moment that you would meet ‘the one’? Timer is a futuristic look at the possibility. It’s a step further than internet dating, where you can have a timer implanted into your wrist that will count down to the moment that you will meet your mate. The thing that makes this concept interesting is that there are so many variables to this seemingly foolproof plan. When you get the implant it won’t tell you immediately in some cases; and you could be waiting years for the dern thing to get to counting down. This is what happens to our heroine Oona. She and her sister Steff both have the implant, and are the last of all their friends not to have it countdown. The timer is something that is voluntary so not everyone has one, and there in lies the rub. If your intended doesn’t have one, then yours will never count down. Oona is anxious about her future as she is turning 30 and still hasn’t found the one. Steff on the other hand is perfectly happy having lots of one night stands with un-timered men in the meantime. The girls have a little brother, whom on his 14th birthday decided he wanted to get timered. The moment his timer is installed, it counts down to the next day! Oona comes completely unglued that her baby brother is about to find his ‘one.’ Much to their families chagrin his one is the daughter of the families Spanish speaking housekeeper.


One night while grocery shopping, a much younger timered checker named Mikey flirts with Oona. She blows him off, but then returns on a whim to begin dating him. She asks when he is supposed to meet his one, and he tells her 4 months or so. So Oona knows that her time with Mikey is limited and struggles with continuing to see him almost every other day. Steff meets a handsome guy on her own, whom is also untimered and begins to fall for him as well. The sisters go to great lengths to hide each of their perspective relationships from the other; until one night when Oona and Mikey crash at Oonas and Steff comes home early. The sisters begin to argue about his impending date to be with his one, and to stop the fighting he reveals that his timer is a fake. With this revelation, more questions arise and more variables. Oona seems to panic, and back out of the relationship though she knows that how she feels about Mikey is the absolute truth. But he isn’t the one, is he? She tries to convince him to get a timer to find out for sure, and he refuses. So does she move on and continue to wait for her timer to go off? Or does she stay with someone; though 6 years younger than she because he makes her happy? The story raises many interesting questions about falling in love and destiny. Very thought provoking, expertly written.

Teeth

When I dialed up Teeth I was sure I’d be getting into some low budget feminist blood fest or something. However I was pleasantly surprised with it’s thoughtfulness and clear story telling. If you haven’t heard, Teeth is a film about a woman who has teeth in her vagina. The tag line of the film says ‘The most alarming cautionary tale for men since fatal attraction.’ which leads you to believe my first impression of what the film would be like. Let me break it down for you. Our heroine is Dawn, a teenage purity priestess, who goes from school to school with a band of Christian soldiers preaching purity to teens and encouraging them to wear purity rings. Completely unexpected, but ok let’s see where this goes. She’s a perfectly happy teen until she meets a new student Toby, whom she is instantly attracted to. Dawn and Toby become friends and go on group dates so they can spend time together. They always make sure that they are with other people so nothing inappropriate happens between them. Dawn begins to have erotic dreams about Toby, and the feeling is mutual. This becomes too much for our girl Dawn and she decides that seeing him even in a group setting is too much for her vows. However, nature takes over and she breaks down one night and calls him to meet her in the woods for a swim. Naturally you know they’re about to be up to no good. They swim, and it begins to rain; so they go to a nearby ‘make out’ cave to wait out the rain. There is a blanket stored there for whomever happens by and they cuddle and kiss, however Toby wants to take it farther. Dawn says no, but Toby is ready for action. Dawn fights and screams and Toby overpowers her to get what he wants. Big mistake on his part as the teeth take over and rescue our girl Dawn from her fate, leaving Toby a bloody screaming mess. He tries to swim away but looses too much blood and is lost in the river.

Dawn of course is freaked out by not only the attack but the disappearance of Toby and tries her best to go on with business as usual. Back at home Dawn has a whole other set of problems. When she was little her father remarried a woman who had a son Brad. This kid is a deeply disturbed heavy metal loving misogynist who lives to torment everyone he comes in contact with. The most fascinating fact about Brad is that when he has sex with a woman, it’s never vaginally. Curious why? Terrible Toby’s memberless body is discovered and investigations ensue. Dawn tries to find out what is wrong with her by doing research on her ‘condition’. Unfortunately she can only find women like herself in mythology. She decides to see a gynecologist to confirm her fears. When in the stirrups being probed she becomes tense and ends up ‘chewing’ off all the doctors digits accidentally. In a freaked out frenzy she runs into the arms of her sometimes stalker Ryan for comfort, only to be seduced by him. However she kind of likes the guy so she willingly has sex with him and nothing awful happens to his junk. To me this makes the whole movie stick. If she’s participating willingly the teeth don’t bite down. However things take a turn when the next day while they are having sex he answers the phone to talk to a homie. He then tells her while mid stroke that he had a bet with the homie that he could get her into bed. Guess what happens next? Crazy, thrilling, sick, and cool.

Planet Brooklyn

The cover of Planet Brooklyn puts me off, and had for a while as it looked like one of those ‘How to be a Player’ sort of black movies that make you wonder why you wasted the last hour and a half of your life on that crap. However I decided to take the plunge anyway and I am so glad that I did. This film centers around two best friends in their late 20’s, Ish and Oz, who have dedicated their lives to circumventing the system by any means necessary. They do not want to be part of the 9 to 5 grind in any way shape or form. (I mean who does?) Ish is played by real life Ishmael Butler better known as ‘Butterfly’ of the now defunct Digable Planets and current member of the mashup outfit ‘Cherry Wine’ (and one of the finest brothers in existence..but I digress) and hip hop fixture Bonz Mallone as Oz. Oz happened to inherit a nice Brooklyn apartment from his grandmother’s passing; so he and Ish pretty much squat there making ends meet by Ish giving haircuts in the living room and Oz gambling. They both speak obsessively about a band that they are supposed to be assembling, and have been since junior high. When they aren’t at the house they are at the local record shop putting records on lay away and blowing on about their band with the shops owner Smokey. The two are constantly trailed by Junie, a dude who is enthusiastic about music too, but always seems to have outlandish claims about who he knows and how talented he is. Ish and Oz let him hang but don’t take him too seriously. Ish seems to be from a great middle class home, that he sneaks in and out of to get records and groceries. He and his father aren’t on good terms because Ish chose his own path. One day when Ish is walking home he sees a gorgeous lady bombing a wall, and falls for her instantly. Her name is Veronica, and she’s a multi talented artists as well as the woman of his dreams. They fall for eachother, each encouraging the other to follow their dreams. However each has their own demons to deal with when it comes to making something real happen instead of doing it as a hobby or just talking about it everyday.


One day when they two are out a bird takes a dump on Oz’ head, and he takes it as a sign of good luck and begins gambling all over town and wins. He then goes to Atlantic city to ride his streak and wins even more. Oz feels unstoppable. One day he calls the local bookie, Wolfie to place a bet for $3,000 and loses. He decides to get out of town for a while till things blow over. The next thing you know the three of them are piled in an old Cadillac to go camping for a few days. When they return, things haven’t blown over and Wolfie wants his payment. When Oz tells him he can’t pay, Wolfie comes up with shotgun alternative. Back at the apartment Veronica and Ish are chilling and Veronica pops in a cassette tape that was lying around, and it’s hot. Turns out Junie wasn’t lying about his talent afterall, and Ish goes to find him to finally start his band. This film definitely speaks to that part of us that never wants to compromise for the sake of growing up. Well written, and emotionally honest.