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This is Hip Hop Movie Club, the show for serious hip hop fans who want to deepen their

cultural knowledge.

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We've watched over 75 hip hop themed films, and in this episode, we will break down the

revolutionary and controversial rap group NWA.

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So Boogie, why don't you go ahead and express yourself.

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Tell us a little bit about the group, its original members and how it branched off and

left a huge legacy.

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we all know NWA, the controversial rap group out of Compton, California, comprised of

members Ice Cube, MC Ren Eazy E, DJ Yella Dr.

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Dre, and Arabian Prince, the original members.

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But most people don't even know that Arabian Prince was a member.

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But I mean, I'm gonna give him his props because he was in the group.

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we're gonna talk about how they came on the map and revolutionized what West Coast hip

hop, meant not only to the United States, but also to the world.

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They spoke unapologetically about where they came from and what they experienced in their

neighborhood and also how they were treated.

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And the lyrics were raw, gritty, unfiltered

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they hit hard.

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from that era coming up, you had to know who they were.

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Like it was a point in time where I actually thought I was a member of the group.

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I dressed in all black, my, either a Raiders cap on or a Kings hat or a White Sox hat.

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Because love the way they just spoke from the heart about what they dealt with.

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I mean, I, even on the East coast, there were some parallels to our life's experiences

growing up in the hood.

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but not only was this group successful, it spawned solo careers for several of its

members.

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They're still, active.

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Ice Cube, still active as an MC, still putting out good music.

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the late Eazy E who unfortunately passed away due to contracting the HIV and later

developed into to AIDS.

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but he had a thriving solo career as well.

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Dr.

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Dre, producer extraordinaire.

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mean, if you want to work with a top notch producer, Dre is in a, he's in a Mount Rushmore

of hip hop producers easily.

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And he had a solo rap career as well.

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But let's talk about some of the impact of these solo artists.

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All right, so let's start for Ice Cube.

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Ice Cube was a penman.

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for NWA, wrote a lot of the lyrics due to complications with dealing with the management

style Jerry Heller.

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And in Eazy-E, he left, decided to leave the group and went on his solo career.

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But he actually had a very successful solo career, like I mentioned, forming Da Lench mob,

working with the West Side Connection, influential on the West Coast hip hop scene and

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also

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hip-hop in general.

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From there he has a very successful acting career going talk about every uh movie but some

of his notables was Boyz in the Hood, Anaconda, spawned the Friday franchise, three funny

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movies and there's talks of a fourth installment on the way.

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Then he has the Are We There Yet?

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movie

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became family friendly Ice Cube and it spawned a sequel as well.

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Then we have the Barbershop series.

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There's three of those movies plus one spin-off and it all actually ended up spawning a

television series as well.

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And then there's Ice Cube the entrepreneur.

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I mean currently right now he's now the owner and face of the big three basketball league.

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Very successful three on three basketball league that.

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gives a platform retired NBA players as well as former college players who want to go

play.

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And they have games all over the country and it's televised.

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I mean, it's been going on for a few years now.

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So kudos to him for that.

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Eazy-E, as I mentioned, had a strong solo career as well as rapping alongside NWA.

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And I think one of his biggest notables, than his own career,

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was helping discover and found the group Bone Thugs N Harmony, who went on to spawn a very

successful rap career as well.

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They came out of the Cleveland, Ohio area.

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you know, so Eazy E's impact on hip hop, know, was forming a group and Ruthless Records

and bringing on Bone Thugs N Harmony onto the scene is very impactful to hip hop.

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They had a completely different style than anyone else at the time.

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You put one of your songs right now, a lot of would have mumbled it or something, but

they're going to go with it because they know that their song is popular.

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Yeah, catchy stuff.

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See, the cross roads It was so big, man, it was so big that Big had to bring them on one

of his songs.

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And Big was at the time was the top of the food chain.

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He said, you know, got to these guys one of my hits.

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And Big even changed his flow to match their flow, which

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at the time was almost unheard of because Big was rapping.

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His style was his style, but he changed his style to match their style, which was kind of

So let's talk about Dr.

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Dre.

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He brought one of his guys out of Texas who went on to have a pretty successful rap career

until a car accident actually ended up making him lose his voice.

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I'm talking about the one and only DOC.

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He actually had a relationship as well as

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helped to spawn the career of Michel'le, the singer.

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After deciding to leave the group, Dr.

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Dre went on to co-found Death Row Records with Suge Knight, also discovering the likes of

the legendary Snoop Dogg, who everybody knows right now, you know, who in turn had his own

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crew, the Dogg Pound.

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uh Snoop is also going on to star in various television and film roles.

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Too many to name.

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He pops up in commercials all the time.

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He's a pop culture icon.

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I mean, he's had a long standing public friendship with Martha Stewart of all people.

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And I mean, to see the two of them, if you could tell it is genuine, it's not scripted at

all.

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Most recently during the Summer Olympics,

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Snoop Dogg was there, he was the ambassador, he was all over the place and everything,

just meeting and greeting with everyone.

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I who doesn't love Uncle Snoop?

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He and Flava Flav were the face of the Olympics.

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Like hip-hop leaves its fingerprints everywhere.

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And I'm looking forward to seeing what they do once the Olympics, the summer games go back

to LA.

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It's going to be a whole extra level of, know, Snoop Dogg in the Olympics.

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And now we talk one of our members of the Mount Rushmore of hip hop films, Tupac Shakur.

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a lot of people consider Tupac the greatest MC ever or the greatest rapper of all time.

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Which side of that fence you fall on, you can't deny his impact on the game and how

influential he was to hip hop in general, just off of the type of figure he was, his

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lyrics, his presence in the game.

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He also went on to spawn a very successful

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Though short lived due to the fact that he was taken from us prematurely, he had a very

thriving movie career that was taking off.

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started long stream good films, which is why we placed him on our Mount Rushmore.

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Dr.

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Dre also went on after leaving Death Row to form Aftermath Records.

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this boy, that's one of the greatest MCs I've heard.

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There's no denying it.

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Eminem, a lyrical juggernaut also went on to found his own label Shady Records.

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But Em rapped circles around most people's favorite MCs.

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He's just good.

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He's got his conglomerate called The Slaughterhouse composed of some very good MCs.

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And then we also 50 Cent.

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Another dope MC, whether you like him or not.

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You can't deny when he came on with that, Get Rich or Die Tryin', that album, I still

consider that album a classic.

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Every song on there had me nodding my head when it came on and when it hit the scene.

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50 Cent's influence, he actually had a group as well, G-Unit, composer of himself, Tony

Yayo, Lloyd Banks, and Young Buck.

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All three of them also have solo rap albums, solo careers.

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not as successful as 50 Cent, but successful in their own right.

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He also brought on another MC out of the LA area, The Game, who also had a nice, though

short-lived solo run.

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But he still pops up on songs every now and then.

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So, I he's still around.

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still spitting some heavy lyrics.

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50 Cent's impact is also extended television and film.

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He has the Powerverse, as I like to call it, which started off with his television show

Power and is extended to different spin-offs.

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There's too many to name.

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I can't even keep up with.

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Every time I turn on television is another one coming out.

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And also BMF.

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And it's talks that he's got other ones down the pipeline.

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like I said, they're still rapping hard, rapping strong.

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And the influence definitely put that area on the map.

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Amazing breakdown Boogie.

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Thanks for educating the audience here on the influence of NWA, how it spawned so many

legends are still prominent today.

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mean NWA, I remember when they burst on the scene in the late 80s and they were like shot

out of a cannon.

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They had a meteoric rise.

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But like you said, super raw.

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unfiltered, and I don't think American society was really ready for it.

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And we've never seen anything or heard anything so aggressive like that.

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And so it was marked with controversy.

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people were saying that they were glorifying violence and that there's no denying that the

lyrics were misogynistic, homophobic and violent.

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There's denying that.

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they spit the raw truth of what they saw in their neighborhoods.

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So I think what happens is if this stays underground, like people don't say it, but then

when it hits folks like myself, we get like the white...

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Suburban types and it's like this is going to influence people but they were selling

records upon records People just couldn't get enough of it because they had a great

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lyrical flow but first of all the the acronym NWA controversial in itself for what it

stands for but that was like the least of the controversies because they had That yeah,

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you would think that was my god.

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I can't believe that it stands for that, right?

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But obviously the F tha Police is the number one source of controversy because the

institution of the police, of police, they were like, cannot promote violence against the

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police.

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Even though there's been obviously many recorded instances of and still happening today of

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police brutality against minorities specifically.

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But still they were all up in arms and they declared a boycott of any musical group that

advocate assaults.

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You had the government get involved.

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Tipper Gore was one of the most vocal about trying to censor NWA.

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So yeah, they were definitely marred with a lot of controversy back then.

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Is this okay?

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It's not.

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shortly, they already had the controversy with the parental advisory.

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I think 2Live Crew was the first to feel that wrath and have that label on it.

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then Luke Skywalker was adamant to protest that.

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you can see how

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folks would be upset about that.

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And then we saw in the movie Straight Outta Compton how they were told not to perform F

the police live in Cincinnati and Detroit.

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And they were, they just continued on with it.

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And then, you know, riots ensued at those concerts, et cetera.

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Yep.

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That was the one of the biggest controversies there, but the more controversy would come

and then you would see

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internal feuding among members and you don't have to give it away because we're going to

be showing Straight Outta Compton and stuff.

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But you see how things got real nasty between Cube and Eazy E and Dre.

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And then it was a short lived, you know, the group itself.

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And then you saw they spawn onto the solo careers, et cetera.

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By 91, the big beef between Ice Cube and the rest of the crew escalated and the group

formally disbanded in 91 as well.

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So Dyno Wright, you want to take us through a little bit about the film itself, straight

out of Compton?

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Sure.

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So for the most part, most people think that the movie, it's about 80 % accurate.

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they do take some creative liberties.

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This is F.

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Gary Gray, the director.

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And depending on who you ask, some things are depicted mostly accurately and some things

have been rearranged to make it a better looking story.

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some things like Cube really did smash up Bryan Turner's Priority Records office with a

baseball bat after not getting money.

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He was promised and, Cube really, really did leave NWA because of the dispute over

royalties with Jerry Heller, the manager of NWA and Suge Knight really did beat up Eazy-E

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and Eazy-E wanted to get back at him and kill him and

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Jerry Heller talked him out of it, to which he regretted later.

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They did get arrested in Detroit after performing F the police, it actually wasn't because

of the police directly.

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They played the song because they were mad at the tour promoter.

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And they actually made it back to the hotel before getting arrested.

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And Cube to this day says that the police really just wanted autographs.

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They weren't that upset about it.

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And that the riot that happened after the show was because of the

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venue turning the amplifiers off, not because of the police per se.

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it's mostly accurate.

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It's accurate enough.

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there's lots of other things that in the film that are mostly true.

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They did get a letter from the FBI taking exception with their music, but the FBI walked

it back.

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They weren't really supposed to be infringing on First Amendment rights.

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In the film that they are shown being harassed by the police which did happen according to

Jerry Heller But that wasn't the direct cause of them writing the song F the police.

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Cube had been working on that for a while But he kind of sat on it until after Dre

finished his like weekend prison time.

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He had a lot of traffic tickets he had to work off So it wasn't a direct connection

between we got harassed.

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Let's write this song Cube was already penning that

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in the background.

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And then, the film, as Eazy-E is dying, see this reunion between and Dre and Cube.

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It didn't actually happen.

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He died before they could actually reconcile in person.

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there's that.

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What people have criticized this film about was some of Dr.

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Dre's misogyny and his treatment of women, to which he's apologized many times and has

denounced his previous behavior, but it's not really in there as much as people would

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think would be an accurate description of what that was like back then.

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the Dee Barnes incident, we've talked about that in the past and that was wild and some

people never get over that.

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And it's interesting how like with the Me Too movement, how some people stay above the

fray and like...

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They don't really get retribution.

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And you know, that's a, it's a personal judgment.

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Like, you know, some We're judged by higher power, if you believe that.

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Right.

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So, but not for me to say, but it is interesting that some of the misogyny and you know,

even the lyrics.

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So lyrics are one thing.

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And I know Snoop Dogg did a lot of misogynist stuff in his, in a lot of, a lot of rap acts

do as well, but the actual physical assault, which

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That's hard to swallow for lot of folks.

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Right.

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He has apologized, so there's that, but there's a lot of sort of amnesia about all that.

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it is hard to, you you have to consider this was him as a 25 year old is a different

person than him as very grown adult.

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a personal judgment call, I guess.

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And that's why this criticism of the film comes up because you don't get this full picture

of what happened back then.

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So.

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Make of that what you will.

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And the final thing I'll say is that in the film, they portray Eazy-E as being kind of

broke when he died, or definitely broke, but according to other sources, he was fine.

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He was sitting on some stack, so he was sometimes there's creative license that happens

and it makes for a good story.

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And it did actually do well.

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It was fairly highly rated on...

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IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes and generally very positive reviews from the mainstream film

criticism writers here and there.

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People think it was a mixed bag, but it's definitely entertaining and it's good to see on

the big screen for the 10th anniversary coming up at SteelStacks.

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November 13th, be there.

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hahahahah

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Right on.

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you

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Ha ha ha!

223

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I think the film was well done.

224

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If you're a hip hop head, it's a must see.

225

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Most hip hop heads, I think, have seen it.

226

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Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

227

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performances of O'Shea Jackson as Ice Cube and Corey Hawkins as Dr.

228

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Dre are really good.

229

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I think O'Shea Jackson Jr.

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has a head start.

231

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I think Liv, you know, some of this and has, could go right to the source, his own father.

232

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But yeah, Paul Giamatti as Jerry Heller, like he's great in everything, right?

233

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Paul Giamatti.

234

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So catch him in this.

235

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catch him in this.

236

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Yeah, it's so funny like Corey Hawkins like I know his name, but I never call him by his

name.

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No matter what it is.

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Dr.

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Dre.

240

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That's his name now.

241

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I don't even call his name, which is just so sad.

242

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I feel so bad for but I can't I can't help it.

243

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Every time I see him, I always call him Dr.

244

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Dre.

245

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Mm-hmm.

246

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And I think of him as Benny on the dispatch from the In the Heights.

247

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He has such a great role in that also.

248

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Yeah, because I'm such a stan in the Heights.

249

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Yeah, but NWA, without NWA, you wouldn't see nearly as much, I guess, protest rap.

250

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And I know we, there's a long lineage and he did inspire folks like Kendrick Lamar.

251

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You know, F the police became a protest type song.

252

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And you know, we're talking about 1989 when this was popular and then you have fight the

power was, was out at the same time.

253

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It even says something on 1989, the summer.

254

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Right.

255

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So this was like really.

256

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a powder keg of protest rap which we had not seen in the past.

257

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I mean there were songs when you're talking about Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel and The

Message and stuff like that talking about the streets and you know but as far as like

258

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protesting against authority I think this broke the mold.

259

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Shining a light on the conditions in Compton and stuff like that was not seen and turned

out to be quite lucrative for the record labels.

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Because it's what, know, those of us in suburban America wanted to see that kind of stuff.

261

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Wanted to listen to that kind of music.

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It was different.

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was unique.

264

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And I was reading some articles from the BBC about the legacy of NWA.

265

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And there was a quote, think it was, maybe Cube had the quote saying, everybody loves an

outlaw, like Billy the Kid, Al Capone.

266

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So these guys were the outlaws.

267

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Like you said, wearing the silver and black.

268

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The Raiders are like the outlaw franchise of NFL, the Renegades.

269

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And hip hop didn't really have that.

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character, so to speak, characterization of the renegade or the outlaw.

271

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And so people adopted it.

272

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Yep, man, everybody loves the bad guy.

273

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Yep.

274

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And I said, I thought I was a member, man.

275

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I either had a Raiders hat on or a King's hat.

276

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I still come across one.

277

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toss a tee off of there for YouTube video.

278

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Yeah.

279

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But one thing I forgot to mention, I just realized, know, in talking about the family

tree.

280

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Family Tree is also the name of the title for their final compilation album and it

featured all the original six members of NWA as well as guest performances by the West

281

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Side Connection, Snoop Dogg and Xzibit and it was released in September of 2008 so it's

like wow talk about the Family Tree and their final compilation album is called Family

282

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Tree

283

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and I also forgot to mention this.

284

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I mean, I mentioned the Westside Connection, but I got to give them Dub C, Mack 10 and all the Ice Cube.

285

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I got to give them their names because they did dope.

286

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And the same thing with Dogg Pound, Dazz and Corrupt.

287

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Just dope MCs.

288

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But yeah.

289

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their orbit is quite large and impactful.

290

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They really held down the gangster rap from the west coast.

291

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Yeah.

292

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It wasn't Del the Funky Homosapien related to one of the guys as well, I think.

293

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There's a connection there.

294

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There's a connection.

295

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by Dre.

296

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It was Ice Cube.

297

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Okay.

298

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Yeah.

299

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Yeah.

300

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And Beats by Dre.

301

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Like how much money has Dre made with his headphones?

302

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A literal billionaire.

303

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Yeah.

304

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Yeah, exactly.

305

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Who would have thought?

306

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What was even more impressive is because of the misogyny and the explicit lyrics, they

were like number one on the charts for a while without any radio play or real support from

307

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MTV, right?

308

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Not a lot of support from MTV,

309

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hard to do.

310

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Not many groups can do that.

311

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long before the days of streaming.

312

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No streaming, no YouTube.

313

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Yeah.

314

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Basically them and Metallica before the Black Album.

315

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Not a lot of radio play and still selling gold records going platinum.

316

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Yeah.

317

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We talked about similar concept with Wu-Tang Clan, right?

318

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Wu-Tang didn't, because they had that feud with Hot 97 as well.

319

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So they got like hardly any radio play.

320

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They just did it on their own and they just became, it was underground swelling of

popularity.

321

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When you're that dope and impactful, it becomes a thing.

322

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I do remember seeing NWA though, like on Yo MTV raps.

323

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got some, Express Yourself was on a lot.

324

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Express Yourself was on.

325

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Yeah.

326

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100 Miles of Running got bit of play too.

327

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But definitely Express Yourself.

328

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That song came out, that was embedded in my skull.

329

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It just kept coming on.

330

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I love that sample.

331

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Yep.

332

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Thanks for tuning in to the Hip Hop Movie Club Show.

333

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I'm Dyno Wright, filmmaker, designer, longtime hip hop fan, and the last street out of my

neighborhood is Compton Way.

334

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So when I leave my house, I leave straight out of Compton.

335

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So great, so great.

336

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I'm JB, 80s and 90s nostalgia junkie, long time hip hop fan.

337

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I remember when NWA stood for the National Wrestling Alliance where Ric Flair became a

star.

338

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Woo!

339

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And I was today years old when I learned that Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins now owns

this franchise.

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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

341

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And I'm Boogie, a DJ, long time hip hop fan.

342

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And I know I mentioned this during our Straight Outta Compton episode, but I went to the

Harlem screening for the movie, sponsored by Hot 97 and WBLS.

343

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And I got to hang out with Laura Styles and DJ Nuff from Hot 97.

344

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Great experience.

345

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Join us Thursday November 13th at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas at SteelStacks in

Bethlehem PA as the Hip Hop Movie Club screens Straight outta Compton.

346

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Surprise!

347

00:23:21,916 --> 00:23:23,791

10th anniversary screening.

348

00:23:23,875 --> 00:23:29,250

You will not want to miss the story of the world's most dangerous rap group on the big

screen.

349

00:23:29,250 --> 00:23:32,375

And remember, don't hate, checkmate.

350

00:23:34,791 --> 00:23:37,250

You play chess while they're playing checkers.

351

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Game over.