Awesome music video Wednesday!

Due to the fact that a certain friendly apartment complex decided to slap me with a boot on my truck during yesterday's lunch hour, I was unable to post my weekly music video. So to those of you dedicated readers, I will be posting not one awesome music video but TWO awesome music videos!!!!

It took me a bit to figure out what music genre would be suitable for this week. In a recent comment by 2008 presidential hopeful Barack Obama about the 'quiet riot' brewing among blacks in the gulf coast against the Bush administration, Obama warned about the chances of a similar eruption to the one in Los Angeles in 1992.

Los Angles was a boiling pot ready to blow over in the year before the riots. Racial tension was thick, gang violence was worse than ever and the poverty level was growing more in the numbers. The call for action was powerfully expressed in the music of the time. Bands like Sublime, Rage Against the Machine, Rancid and Bad Religion produced songs about the riots but no genre expressed it more than hip-hop.

Years before the riots, West coast rappers N.W.A recorded their controversial second album Straight Outta Compton as a message to the problems blacks were facing in Compton, California and established the beginning of the Gansta rap era.

Labeled the World's most dangerous group, N.W.A's 1988 album featured songs about rebellion, rage and gang violence. Their unapologetic attitudes celebrated anarchy, provoked the authorities and brought on the the new "Golden Age" of hip-hop. They were seldom played on the radio or MTV due to their violent lyrics, but N.W.A represented the harsh conditions of Los Angeles.

Straight Outta Compton was one of the first albums to have the parental advisory label; their three opening songs "Straight Outta Compton", "F_ _k tha Police" and "Gangsta Gangsta" all reflected police brutality and the revolution in the city.

Below is the 1988 video for "Express Yourself", the call for free expression in which Dr. Dre criticizes other rappers of being too scared to use profanity, forgetting their orgin in the ghetto and writing songs for the sake of making the pop charts, much like the radio rap songs played today.

The video features many powerful images of Dr. Dre as the president with a black Jackie O in the 'black' house speaking to Gorbachev, black children behind bars, a sign that reads "no rapping", and a white police officer on a horse harassing a multicultural crowd and a similar image of the same officer as a slave owner harassing slaves. The song also samples Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band's song with the same name.






NWA is Dr. Dre, Ice Cube,the late Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella. And yes I believe that is Tone-Loc at the end of the video.

Check out another great song and video by Ice Cube "It Was A Good Day", pre-"Are We There Yet" stardom.

Buy the album and other N.W.A albums at Amazon.com
And if you don't know what N.W.A stands for....eh..google it!