Straight Outta Compton reminds viewers that N.W.A. became famous for not holding back about what it was like to be young and black and terrorized by the police. And they did so at a time when the music industry was beginning to figure out how to sell rap music to a broader audience. In tracing the history of N.W.A., the film also highlights a divide that has since sprung up in mainstream hip-hop between the more explicitly political rappers, whose music could alienate many white consumers, and the rappers whose music doesn’t overtly tackle social issues and is agreeable to large swaths of listeners. At a time when the #BlackLivesMatter movement and increased coverage of police killings is dominating the public discourse, Straight Outta Compton raises questions about the responsibility of rap artists in bearing witness, as N.W.A. did, to the problems affecting their communities.

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Hip hop has historically been one of the ways for black Americans to see a reflection of their lives in mainstream art, and the ’80s and ’90s were no different. “Rap was the black community’s CNN,” says Akil Houston, a hip-hop scholar, DJ, and assistant professor at Ohio University. In Straight Outta Compton, N.W.A. believes as much. “Our art is a reflection of our reality,” says Ice Cube (played by Ice Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr.) in the film. He even refers to himself as a journalist who’s “reporting on his community” more honestly than the media itself. When N.W.A.’s manager urges the group to work instead of watching a video of the officers on trial for the Rodney King beatings, they answer: This is the work.

In the film, Eazy-E is thrown against a cop car as officers insult his mother in front of their home, and the incident opens him to Dre’s idea of investing his drug money into music. Some time later, local police officers accost all five members of the group in front of their recording studio. After the confrontation ends with their manager vouching for their presence at the studio, Ice Cube immediately goes in and writes “Fuck Tha Police,” which catapults N.W.A. into the national spotlight. During their subsequent tour, the federal government and the Detroit police force threaten legal action if N.W.A. perform the song. They do it anyway, get arrested, and inspire an audience in Detroit that is navigating a tense racial climate in its own city.

So many moments in the film feel like immediate reflections of American life today. Straight Outta Compton shows the rappers’ relief that King’s beating was captured on video, as well as their hope for justice—echoing the emergence of dashboard-cam footage and citizen-taped videos of encounters with police. At the same time, viewers get to see their disappointment when the two officers accused of attacking King are found not guilty—akin to the reactions of people upset with the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the exoneration of Darren Wilson.