Full coverage: ‘Straight Outta Compton’ and N.W.A’s legacy

It looks like an otherwise strong summer at the domestic box office is is ending on a low note.

The first time I met the rapper Eazy-E in 1988, he was slumped low in an office chair, black Raiders cap jammed firmly over his curls.

“Straight Outta Compton” continued its streak on top of the box office, and the faith-based drama “War Room” exceeded expectations with a No. 2 debut.

As one of the main behind-the-scenes players in the rise of Ruthless Records and its banner act, N.W.A, music executive Jerry Heller has remained notably mum about his portrayal in the rap group’s recent biopic, “Straight Outta Compton.”

In the months before N.W.A’s album “Straight Outta Compton” was released in the summer of 1988, a team of teenage female rappers from the Inland Empire called J.J.

Amid a firestorm of controversy that biopic “Straight Outta Compton” ignored the storied instances of alleged violence against women at the hands of N.W.A’s most successful co-founder, Dr.

Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson) has had hit movies before, but even he couldn’t have predicted that a film about his former rap group N.W.A would one day break box office records as the No. 1 musical biopic and the biggest August opening for an R-rated movie.

Long before “Straight Outta Compton” hit theaters last Friday, hip-hop purists wondered how the N.W.A biopic would handle some of the less heroic moments in the West Coast rap group’s history.

Director F. Gary Gray is no stranger to the music or back story of N.W.A.

Controversy is nothing new for N.W.A.

One of the virtues of a movie such as “Straight Outta Compton” is that it deals with a past not too far gone.

“Straight Outta Compton” is expected to top the box office for a second weekend in a row as Universal Pictures continues to expand the film’s theater count.

As audiences were leaving “Straight Outta Compton” on its $60.2-million opening weekend, many were asking about the unknown actor playing N.W.A member Eric “Eazy-E” Wright.

What rhymes with “synergy?” Sales of music by Dr.

“Straight Outta Compton” lifted the box office out of its August funk, debuting at No. 1 in the U.S. and Canada with an estimated $56.1 million.

The success of “Straight Outta Compton” — officially at a $60.2 million opening weekend as of Monday morning — is the kind of movie that inspires a lot of post-release dissection.

It dominated the pop-cultural conversation last week and helped drive its companion movie to a No. 1 showing at the weekend box office.

The premiere of the rap biopic “Straight Outta Compton” went all gangsta on the Friday box office, riding strong reviews and favorable crowd reaction as parent studio Universal raced to an all-time box office record.

When N.W.A burst out of Compton in the late 1980s, the hip-hop group’s powerful music and political message resonated with young fans around the world.

The N.W.A film “Straight Outta Compton” had a good day at the box office.

Of the scores of screenwriters who might have authored the story of gangsta rap on the big screen, Jonathan Herman is not the most intuitive candidate.

There’s a shot early in the new film about rap group N.W.A, “Straight Outta Compton,” that shows a teenaged Andre Young lying on his back at home, surrounded by records.

Cinemas in major cities across the country are hiring additional security guards as a precaution for the screening of Universal’s critically acclaimed movie “Straight Outta Compton,” theater executives said.

That Dr.

With the arrival of the N.W.A movie “Straight Outta Compton” comes a renewed interest in Los Angeles hip-hop of the late 1980s and ‘90s.

Universal Pictures is expected to score another hit at the box office this week with the release of its critically acclaimed musical biopic “Straight Outta Compton.”

A look at the actors, musicians and more that made it to the Los Angeles premiere of “Straight Outta Compton.”

When O’Shea Jackson Jr. was preparing to play his father in “Straight Outta Compton,” the N.W.A founding member gave him one big tip on set: Don’t frown in every scene.

At last, the doctor will see you now. Dr.

Ice Cube and Dr.

On Thursday night, Los Angeles rap kingmaker Dr. Dre unveils his first album in 16 years.

“Compton,” the new album from Dr.

Just days after Ice Cube announced that an N.W.A reunion (well, most of a reunion) would land at the BET Experience festival, one member of the group is lambasting the major, soon-to-be-released biopic about the pioneering hip-hop act.

“Straight Outta Compton” — and by way of Hollywood — the new trailer has arrived for director F.

On a film set in Leimert Park, an actor playing rap mogul Suge Knight angrily peeled out of a parking lot in a Jeep.

Eric Wright, who as the controversial rapper and music entrepreneur Eazy-E helped to put both “gangsta-rap” style and Compton on the pop culture map, died Sunday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications of AIDS.

I DIDN’T know what to make of N.W.A the first time I heard the revolutionary rap group on KDAY, the radio home of rap in L.A. in the late 1980s.

The last few years have brought a spate of films about the civil rights movement, with the Birmingham campaign in Alabama, the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and some plucky Mississippi maids all taking center stage in Hollywood.

Rap music is not polite.

Rap music, already widely linked in the public mind to gang violence, came within a heartbeat of another bad mark Thursday night when a fight broke out near the stage during N.W.A’s concert at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim.