Straight Outta Compton - The Motion Picture

? Heller managed both Cube and Dre before NWA, but he founded Ruthless with Eazy, and that's where the problems started. Eazy and Heller's financial arrangement as label heads essentially squeezed out Dre and Cube. Heller was willing to lose both Dre and Cube as long as he had Eazy, the less talented but more amicable one.

xp

also eazy WAS the star post NWA - he was the king, as evidenced by him leading, headlining all other west coast rappers in this vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJD1oDKKMdM

Heller managed both Cube and Dre before NWA, but he founded Ruthless with Eazy, and that's where the problems started. Eazy and Heller's financial arrangement as label heads essentially squeezed out Dre and Cube. Heller was willing to lose both Dre and Cube as long as he had Eazy, the less talented but more amicable one.

yes. he was willing to lose the greater talents who would have dropped him as a manager as soon as better managers pointed out how bad the deals were. i would agree this would make him "stupid" if he didn't continue to make millions with a more willing accomplice.

he was definitely the star, but he couldn't function without the other two

I love All in the Same Gang so much btw. of course, produced by Dre and Eazy's verse written by Ren iirc

xp

he was willing to lose the greater talents who would have dropped him as a manager as soon as better managers pointed out how bad the deals were.

well he could've just given them better deals/renegotiated. After which no Death Row, no Death Certificate, possibly no Snoop but who knows how things would have gone, he probably would have made many MORE millions is my point

maybe not by your artistic measure, but eazy DID function without the other two. a multi-platinum ep in 1993. two gold albums after his death. and when he died, he was mourned by a multiplatinum #1 single released on heller's label.

and yes, maybe there's a world where dre would have never let suge take over and cube would have stuck with heller as his career went hyphenate. but those are some biiiiiig maybes considering the industry collaborators dre and cube wound up with.

to just say "lol eazy is nothing compared to dre and cube, whatta maroon" is ignoring a lot of details

not to mention eazy DYING twenty years ago, who knows how much hustling he could have accomplished otherwise

a multi-platinum ep in 1993. two gold albums after his death.

you are aware these albums are terrible right

"maybe not by your artistic measure" was my attempt to head such qualitative shit off at the pass

what about jerry heller's career suggests he was driven by the desire for a great artistic legacy

I was just doublechecking

xp

I kinda wonder if Heller gravitating towards Eazy was emblematic of him being a more old-school record company guy - maybe having a frontman that was propped up by other producers/writers just didn't occur to him to be a liability, after all this is how it was/is done in a lot of cases. But once Dre took off as a producer and Cube became a huge star it must have occurred to him in retrospect, "if only I had kept those guys together"...

or even just kept them all on the same label or under his management

oh i'm sure when he saw dre and jimmy iovine split a billion from apple he thought "man i wish i had a cut of that" but i dunno if dre would have kept him along for that ride under any circusmstance or that dre would even have a billion in headphone money to split if heller had stuck by him

yeah too many hypotheticals

but to say jerry heller is an idiot for not having the foresight to be jimmy iovine kinda ignores that jerry heller did quite well for being jerry heller

true, he did not hitch his wagon to Ren

considering the success of bone thugs i think its very likely eazy would have wound up the birdman of the west coast (with heller smiling beside him) assuming suge knight didn't kill him later in the 90s. again, not exactly hollywood or headphone money, but not bad.

sure, my point is that it's relative though. he had three goldmines to choose from, and he chose the one with the least gold in it

That's cash money Birdman not a delusional former star trying to do legitimate theatre - though I wouldn't rule that out as another possibility

and all i've bumped on is the idea that it was stupid or idiotic to go with eazy, considering heller's relative lack of value beyond hustling music on an indie level. never denied dre or cube made more money.

a delusional former star trying to do legitimate theatre - though I wouldn't rule that out as another possibility

heh

Thought this was surprisingly good. One overly sentimental scene having to do with Dre's brother, and maybe a couple of other scenes that didn't work for me. Factual accuracy? Haven't a clue. Does it gloss over a lot? Of course--but whatever is glossed over is also still there in plain view. The music, for me--basically a fan when the first album came out, also a million miles away--was really handled well (my favourite song, "Compton's in the House," doesn't show up, though). The police stuff couldn't be more timely. Sly sense of humour throughout, and all five performances for the band members are solid, especially O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Giamatti's good up to a point, but he's basically doing Giamatti stuff.) In the end, it felt like there was a lot of feeling in the film from Dre and Ice Cube for Easy-E.

sounds promising! probably gonna be awhile before I can see this

I def want to see this

but whatever is glossed over is also still there in plain view.

Not necessarily:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/12/straight-outta-compton-dr-dre-s-assault-on-dee-barnes-and-the-problem-with-music-biopics.html

haha yeah I was wondering about that

I meant more in a general sense--there's enough there that you can infer the rest. (Or maybe I just know enough of the story that I could.)

I spent 20 minutes on that post, trying extra-hard not to say anything that could be misconstrued.

haha there was that thing going round a couple of days back w/ 'dre and cube address abuse allegations and misogyny in lyrics' and dre said some contrite things, he didn't sound so much like it was something he genuinely agonized over like lennon, but still i thought 'well that's good they've matured and they're wiser' and then i read the bit about misogyny which was pretty much the same 'if you're not a bitch or a ho then we're not talking about you' line from 1988 and thought 'or maybe not'.

Good review from David Edelstein, and pretty accurate, I'd say:

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/film-review-straight-outta-compton.html

Another thing I meant by "in plain view"--it's there, but most of the really unsavory stuff is attached to Suge Knight (including a virtual reenactment of The Godfather's bandleader-contract anecdote). If you to into the film knowing even some of the background, I think you'll be aware of that.

Yea Dee Barnes incident is one I called out during the movie as being a glaring omission. Even Dre's high speed pursuit is painted as more of a lashing out in frustration more than him being blinded by his good fortune at Death Row.

Still liked it a lot though. Found it pared down the Eazy-Dre beef in the 90s a bit. Dre Day didn't get a mention and I know Eazy was very hurt by that song.

But it covered A lot of ground. Cube smashing up the Priority office was ace.

Holy shit, I just read about the Dee Barnes incident for the first time. What a fucking asshole. If that happened today his career would be over faster than you can say Ray Rice.

My friend saw it & said he was surrounded by ppl (young kids he assumed mostly) who audibly gasped when the cops werent charged in the Rodney King trial, and who were shocked when Eazy got diagnosed

lol

? Cops went to trial

think she means convicted

yeah sorry, brain fail

in Heller's autobiography he says Eazy was a brilliant businessman, which isn't hard to believe -- I suspect Heller choosing Eazy as the breakout star had to do with 1) Eazy's personal charisma 2) his faith in Eazy as a smart businessman

If that happened today his career would be over faster than you can say Ray Rice.

― Mr. Snrub, Saturday, August 15, 2015 4:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Strongly Disagree With This Statement

Rappers are forgiven for everything.

I mean Ray Rice only Vaught heat cos of the vids. And even after the first dropped the narrative that he pushed her and she slipped and hit her head on a bar had a lot of traction til the second put it to resy.

If Dee Barnes happened in 2015, she'd be doxxed and getting death threats on twitter.

*caught f u phone

Fairly sure Chris Brown is still a star. Famous men can beat women and still be loved/revered.

Sadly

Yup

Just watched, and agree with clemenza above -- was pleasantly surprised with this, and since I wanted it to be good, I came out inspired. Heck, I'm playing Straight Outta Compton as I type! Also agree w a sentiment in the Edelstein review in that I'm sure a lot was glossed over, but still feel like I learned a lot about these guys, and what it might have been like going through all that stuff. The NWA members all came across as basically "likable", basically because they wanted to be successful, true to themselves and in control of their own destiny. I will never know how accurate the characters were to their true-life counterparts (though I can say I thought all the main actors were good, particularly Jason Mitchell as Eazy E), but their actions seemed believable, even relatable, in the context of the movie for the most part. I thought the movie was good at communicating their constant need to prove themselves, and to not let anyone take away everything they'd worked hard to build. It did a GREAT job at depicting the general shadiness of the music business in general, and how in the end, it really isn't any different than any other extremely competitive operation ("legit", street or otherwise). thumbs up!

Went in with fairly low expectations, and I enjoyed it for the reasons clemenza laid out, particularly during the first 90 minutes or so. I went in prepared to be disappointed by Ice Cube's son, but I think he acquitted himself pretty well! And I agree Jason Mitchell was really good as Eazy E. I think the actor playing Dr. Dre was the weak link in the crew, but I also feel like it may have been harder to play Dr. Dre than the other two.

I saw some criticism on twitter of the film's timeline getting muddy in the second half, but that didn't bother me too much. What are you going to do? You gotta throw 2Pac in there at some point, even if Eazy E died like six months before 2Pac set foot in Death Row's studios.

Also, I really liked the part with the "Friday" screenplay. It definitely felt like a producer's note: "Put that in there! Not enough people know that I wrote that movie!"

haha

I just skim ILX film threads until I've seen the movie myself, so I didn't know until after I saw this that O'Shea Jackson Jr. is Ice Cube's son. I sat in the film thinking, "Jesus, he sure looks and sounds like Ice Cube."

Made me smile: as Heller makes his initial pitch to Eazy-E (sounding a lot like the guy in Almost Famous who tries to sign Stillwater), with his gold records on the wall and stories about REO Speedwagon--Eazy oddly unimpressed--you can hear Grand Funk's "I'm Your Captain" in the background.

I've finally watched this and really liked it (for a biopic).
Maybe because I didn't know much about their story so it didn't feel like the usual "and this is how this historical moment happened".
About the reunion part, there's a moment where Dre says he already has some great tracks for the album and I wonder if that's pure invention or based on anything real ?
Cos if he had these tracks circa Eazy's death some might have been used on 2PAc's album, the Aftermath album or others (someone mentioned "batural born killaz" upthread)...

It would be incredible if the closing credits of this movie rolled to “Straight Outta Compton” by Nina Gordon.

Cos if he had these tracks circa Eazy's death some might have been used on 2PAc's album

Dre was working on an album with Ice Cube and Suge yanked some of the beats (including "California Love") for Tupac

An album full of "Natural Born Killaz" type tracks would have ruled.

I also love that Dre reused yet another interpolation of "Not Just Knee Deep"'s bassline on "Can't C Me"

Dre was working on an album with Ice Cube and Suge yanked some of the beats (including "California Love") for Tupac

Suge yanked it from being a Dre solo single with three Dre verses. The Dre & Cube album Heltah Skeltah had been abandoned about 18 months earlier, with the only completed track going onto Murder Was The Case instead.

(You Can’t See Me’s beat was apparently written for Heltah Skeltah but not recorded by Cube; Dre gave it to The Dogg Pound in 1995, but Suge blocked any Dre productions from the album, so Dre gave it to Tupac to redo as You Can’t C Me.)

can I just say "fuck suge knight" rn?

Here's Dre in late '93 saying "You Don't Wanna See Me" was the only track worked on for Heltah Skeltah so far. Guessing that Cube got the George Clinton vocals hooked up around then (contemporaneous with Bop Gun), even if he didn't put his own down.

I feel weird every time I see the dude who played Dre in other shit

"Hey Dre, why are we calling this album Efil4zaggin?"
"Did you try....reading it backwards?"
"Oh, word"