“Straight Outta Compton” by NWA

"Straight Outta Compton" kicks down the door of N.W.A's 1988 debut album of the same name, and it plays like a mission statement: Ice Cube, MC Ren and Eazy-E trade the mic over a beat Dr. Dre and Yella stitched together from Funkadelic's "You'll Like It Too", Ronnie Hudson and the Street People's "West Coast Poplock", Wilson Pickett's "Get Me Back on Time, Engine No. 9" and the Winstons' "Amen, Brother".

Radio wanted no part of it back then; plenty of stations banned the group outright in the 1980s, so the hit had to wait. It finally came in 2015, when an N.W.A film borrowing its title hit screens and Dr. Dre put out Compton, and together they sent it onto the Billboard Hot 100 at number 38, the biggest debut that week and the group's first top 40 hit. VH1 put it at number six among the greatest hip-hop songs, and Rolling Stone slotted it at 248 in its 2021 rundown of the best songs ever.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.