It came out a couple of years ago, but I never got around to seeing it.  Browsing through the library recently, I noticed it, so checked it out:  "Straight Outta Compton."  If you know anything about rap or hip-hop, you may be familiar with this movie.  If not, it's the story of how N.W.A (Ni---With Attitude), a seminal rap group, emerged from the racial challenges that characterize southwest Los Angeles to find enormous success in the music world.  NWA's success flowed directly out of its members' ability to capture the anger, rage, and helplessness felt by so many young African Americans about their lot in life. Harrassed by police almost daily, shut out of the economic mainstream, living hand to mouth, and finding little future in high school, millions of disenfranchised youth found much with to identify in NWA's music.  Many of NWA's lyrics were harsh and unforgiving, and freqently offensive to many other parts of the American populace.  Yet their words reflected the reality out of which NWA had come.  For those who have not grown up with constant racism and police brutality, such pain is difficult to fathom, and enshrining it in rancorous lyrics makes it even more so.



     Yet NWA's lyrics talk of a world that is all too real to many, many people.  We can wonder why this world happens, and we can assert the possibility, given sufficient work, of escape or remedy from it.  Or we can ask about religion, even about God.  But unless we step into the shoes of those who have lived in this world, we will have trouble seeing a viable path through the angst.
     Yet if there is a transcendent God, if there is a larger picture to this world--every part of it--and if all people are valuable because they've been made in the image of this God, we can say that we are beholden to fuse our best understandings of sociology and scripture to find solution.  We grasp the anger, we believe the transcendent.  We feel the pain, we point to supernatural relief.
     We suggest Jesus.  But we should never forget the reasons from which NWA's lyrics were birthed.  We cannot dismiss the world that easily, cannot posit eternal bliss quickly. Heaven and hell aside, we live in the reality of the now.
     Rest well, Eazy-E.  Thanks for opening our eyes.