Hip-hop is again the voice of protest
The N.W.A biopic “Straight Outta Compton” dominated the box office this weekend with its gritty West Coast story — and the hip-hop music that informs its sensibility and fills its soundtrack.
Rap is also driving another theatrical success this summer: the Broadway musical “Hamilton.”
Call it the season of “Compton” and “Hamilton,” a moment when two stories set in the past — Compton 25 years ago and Hamilton 225 years ago — use hiphop to comment on the state of the nation, present by way of past, reason by way of rhyme.
In “Compton,” lyrics from the prolific Ice Cube rail against the harassment of minority communities by the 1980s’ Los Angeles Police Department. In “Hamilton,” the writings of the prolific founding father Alexander Hamilton rail against the oppression of American colonists by the British in the 1700s.
“Compton,” a uniquely American story about the early days of hip-hop in South L.A., notched $60.2 million over its first weekend, twice its production budget and exceeding many projections. It is on pace to wind up its domestic run with $150 million — a relative rarity for August releases.
“Hamilton,” a uniquely hiphop story about the early days of America, has become a major force on Broadway since opening Aug. 6 (it has reportedly sold out through the spring). President Barack Obama has attended, so has Jon Stewart. Not since “Book of Mormon” — and possibly much earlier - has a show entered the cultural mainstream in this way.
The revelation in the popularity of these new hip-hop entertainments is not that tens of millions of Americans enjoy rap music. It’s how these stories speak to what’s happening in it.
And just as the Korean Warset “MASH” was viewed as a commentary on the Vietnam War, a seemingly unrelated story of 1980s’ strife between blacks and the LAPD or of a political outsider struggling for the soul of a nation may have more to say about what’s happening now in America than many contemporary stories.
The dramatic arcs of the movie and the show are similar. Director F. Gary Gray’s “Compton” uses hip-hop as backdrop and driving force to tell its operatic stories of the seminal group N.W.A. Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” uses hip-hop as backdrop and driving force to tell its operatic stories of the seminal group of Founding Fathers.
Though set and developed on opposite coasts, the two pieces have formed a tandem, showing how beats and rhymes have become a factor in our narrative entertainment in ways that go beyond music — and in ways they never have before.
“Hip-hop culture now is popular culture,” Miranda said. “I don’t see it as a barrier to something being successful. I see it as a reason for something to be successful.”
But far from an entertainment industry discovering — belatedly, as entertainment industries tend to do — a form that any teenager with a pair of headphones has long known about, these rap stories suggest a new urgency.
A form known for social and racial protest is flourishing at this modern moment of angry police-community relations, and it may not be a coincidence. These are stories in which words were used to question the status quo. “Compton” and “Hamilton” both conjure up times in which the cry for justice was the closest some came to the real thing.
“What everyone got wrong about N.W.A is thinking that they were gangsters,” said Jonathan Herman, one of the “Compton” screenwriters. “They were just very good at painting pictures, at playing characters, at using words to report what was happening in the hope that it would change.”