Rap Pioneers Dr Dre & Ice Cube Reveal How It All Began in Biopic 'Straight Outta Compton'

I’m sure that everybody these days knows of two rappers named Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who expanded their careers completely with different ventures. Dre has been known for staying in music by producing other artists’ hit songs and albums, as well as creating the headphones Beats by Dre which he recently made a fortune on. (The headphones are that good. They have Bluetooth!) Ice Cube is known to a lot of people for his film and television efforts as both an actor and producer. He has recently parlayed his producer skills into telling his and Dre’s origins in changing the face of hip-hop with the biopic Straight Outta Compton.

Before showing you the first trailer that premiered earlier this week, let’s take a second to talk about what exactly Straight Outta Compton is. It follows the story of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and their late friend Eazy-E as they look to get out of the 'hoods of Compton, CA (a very tough place to live if you never heard any West Coast rap songs ever) through music. Together they formed a rap group called N.W.A. What does it mean? I’m not comfortable saying, but let’s just say the N does not stand for “Ninja”, if you get my drift. Check out the (NSFW) trailer below that tells you exactly what it all means, plus an additional introduction from Dre and Cube themselves:

There’s a lot of stuff that went down in that trailer. Hopefully, you caught what N.W.A. stands for if you didn’t already know.  Let’s just start off with the introduction. That won’t be in the movie. I know this because I worked on this film, and it is definitely a straight narrative biopic. Paul Giamatti looks pretty different in this movie. He is playing the role of N.W.A.’s manager, Jerry Heller, who came up in the '60s and '70s after managing the first American tours for Elton John and Pink Floyd. Since his days with N.W.A., he has also been the manager of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and The Black Eyed Peas. To better understand Heller, Giamatti read stacks of books about him during filming. He also smelled an awful lot like marinara sauce whenever I saw him. I never found out where the pasta was.

You may have also noticed that the actor they got to play Ice Cube looks an awful lot like Ice Cube. Well, that's because the actor is Cube's own son, O’Shea Jackson Jr., (Cube would be O’Shea Jackson Sr.). Now, I know for a fact they cast an actor named Keith Stanfield as Snoop Dogg, whom Dre helps start a rap career after he leaves N.W.A. Aside from that, I didn’t see anybody resembling him in this trailer.

Finally, my favorite part of the trailer was when Dre walks into his house, happy that he just made money by making music. His mom chastises him for not having a real job to pay bills and says, “Fifty bucks. You think that makes you rich?” Dre retorts with, “It’s a start.” It’s funny considering he has been declared the richest rapper of all time (thanks to all of that producing and them headphones).

What was your favorite part of the trailer? Leave a comment below telling us!

(Screenshot via YouTube)

- Kevin Donaldson, YH Staff