Background
The album reached double platinum sales status, becoming the first album to reach platinum status with no airplay support and without any major tours.
As the hip hop community worldwide received the album with a high note, the members of N.W.A became the top stars for the emerging new era of gangsta rap while popularizing the lyrics of Ice Cube. The album also helped to spawn many young MCs and gangsta hip hop groups from areas such as Compton, California, and South Central Los Angeles, as many thought they had the same story to tell and the ability to pursue the career track that N.W.A had taken, hence groups such as Compton's Most Wanted coming into being.
Because of the recurring violent and sexual lyrics and profanity, often specifically directed at governmental organizations such as the LAPD, N.W.A always enjoyed a particular reputation with U.S. Senators and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This situation persisted over the years with the group's visible head, Eazy-E. One of the reasons for this was "Fuck tha Police", the highly controversial track from the album that resulted in the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service sending a letter to Ruthless Records informing the label of their displeasure with the song's message, and N.W.A was banned from performing at several venues. The FBI letter only helped further popularize the album and N.W.A, and in the group's 1990 song "100 Miles and Runnin', the follow-up to Straight Outta Compton, while the music video shows the crew running from the police, Dr. Dre raps "and now the FBI is all over my dick!" as a response to the FBI's warnings. Also, in his 1990 song "Amerikkka's Most Wanted", Ice Cube mocks the FBI with the line "With a pay-off, cop gotta lay off, FBI on my dick, stay off".
Read more about this topic: Straight Outta Compton
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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