Expressing Themselves

Rating: 7/10 (10 October 2015)

It's 1992, and I'm just a normal teenage kid just starting to expand my musical tastes, and I come across this thing called Gangster Rap...and it hits me like motherfucking train.
From Ice T, to Geto Boys, to Bone, to N.W.A. this stuff was potent and vital and raw. And it was musical genius. It was perfect.
I think a lot of us grew up with that feeling. And more, it opened our eyes to some things - like how mainstream society can be so blind and deaf to loud new things. How music could intersect with politics and sociology, activism. Not to mention the plight of so many young black men in an American landscape previously dominated by whitewashed culture.
And it's nice to see the story of the guys who brought it out, who broke those boundaries, stood up for their freedom of speech, and moved a whole generation with them. The guys who laid the path for so much innovation and really great tunes. To see their personal stories and the troubles and triumphs.
A great music biop and a great snapshot of urban culture of that time.