To the seething despair that settled into the Panthers’ hearts after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., add the desperation instilled by police raids, relentless spying, spurious prosecutions, manipulated suspicions and outright murder, all orchestrated from Washington, DC, by J. Edgar Hoover. No doubt the darkest episode in Nelson’s film, and perhaps its core, is the tale of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Panthers, who died as the direct result of Hoover’s COINTELPRO operations. The rare leader who was worthy of his followers, the 21-year-old Hampton—inspired in his oratory and gifted at building coalitions—was betrayed by his bodyguard (an FBI informer) and executed in bed in 1969 by officers of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Maybe this is as good a moment as any to jump ahead to NWA and its chart-busting hit, “Fuck tha Police.”
NWA didn’t sell music so much as authenticity—its audience was buying the thrill of hearing brutal truths about black America shouted in the language of the street, by people who knew—and authenticity is a promise as well of Straight Outta Compton, made manifest in everything from its scenes of police mayhem (including multiple showings of the Rodney King video) to the casting of O’Shea Jackson Jr. in the role of his father, Ice Cube. You’re meant to feel that the bass on NWA’s tracks sounds like a police battering ram breaking down the door of a drug house (one of the first things to happen in the movie), or to hear Dr. Dre’s percussive turntable-scratching as another kind of rat-a-tat.
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