Yo! This nigga ran over Cle “Bone” Sloane? Is this nigga crazy? Sloane's a straight up Piru Soo Woo nigga. Suge best believe there's gonna be blow back for that one. I guess the other dude was his boy, that's fucked up.

Don't want shit, don't start shit.

Yew, Bone from 'Training Day' and director of 'Bastards Of The Party'.

Prophetic cover:

red band

This looks real good.

You know the only part that stood out, for me?

"that shit is DOPE!"

Maybe its me, but it just seemed out of place for a film set in the late 80's.

This going to deliver, amped.

Dre's mum throwing back 50 dollars at him for 'spinning records'
Those protestor banners 'Ice Cube will melt in hell!''
Suge and his goons jumping someone in the studio, more bad publicity for Marion.
Cube rolling with the Lench Mob, smashing up Priority's offices.
That Snoop crip walkin? The D.O.C., Nate Dogg, Public Enemy etc..will feature.


Ren said the film is about 80% accurate and with so much ground to cover all the stories cant be told.


Along with the N.W.A. material, they must of bagged the rights to Deep-Cover, G-Thang, Dre-Day and No Vaseline.
As the songs mentioned are essential parts of the story.

Old Jerry knows they going to paint him as the devil in the flick. So he's getting his swings in early and drops jewels too:

Today is Dre-Day...

Quote: Dr Dre at 50: NWA, bangers and beef – the moments that made a megastar

He’s the super producer who came straight out of Compton, taught you how to smoke trees and introduced you to OGs Eminem, 50 Cent and Snoop D O double G. As he hits 50, here are 50 reasons why we’ll never forget about Dre
As Dr Dre turns 50 on, we look back at some of the best moments from his career

Angus Batey

Thursday 12 February 2015 19.00 GMT

Andre Young’s entry in the history of rap will be substantial. He has been a pivot and driving force behind gangsta rap and G-funk; the mentor and producer (which, in hip-hop, means “writes the music,” not just “makes it sound good”) to three of the biggest stars the genre has ever seen (50 Cent, Snoop and Eminem); and while he has made records less frequently in the digital age, his creation and recent sale of the Beats by Dr Dre headphone range has put him at the cutting edge of technology and fashion, two industries that crave hip-hop’s cool and which still, unlike recorded music, remain immensely profitable.

He is not the first rapper to turn 50, a milestone he reaches next Wednesday, but Dre has shown that there can be a second act in a hip-hop life. Not every record he has made has been good, some of the innovations he has ushered in have clearly been bad, and some of what he has done has been undeniably ugly. But he remains arguably hip-hop’s premiere creative force: and even in his sixth decade, the rap world still watches keenly to find out what he’s going to do next.

1 Dre’s first production

Wreckin’ Cru’s Slice was an inauspicious beginning, but Andre “Dr Dre” Young’s first production – a shameless “Sucker MCs” knock-off – became a local hit in south Los Angeles in 1984.

2 and 3 Dre meets Cube

Yella, Dre, Lonzo and Cli-N-Tel recruited friends Cru’ in Action (including Ice Cube) to add backing vocals to the dance-craze anthem Cabbage Patch by World Class Wreckin’ Cru in 1986, but the first true collaboration between Dre and Cube came a year later, with My Posse by CIA, which showed an unabashed affinity for the Beastie Boys.

4 NWA begins to come together

Tiring of electro and wearing sequins, Dre and Yella met a drug dealer named Eric Wright. With Ice Cube roped in to write lyrics, the newly minted Eazy-E debuted in 1987 with a Dre production called The Boyz-N-the-Hood.

5 NWA become the biggest sensation in hip-hop …

The team behind Eazy’s single decided to form a band. Without any airplay or advertising their debut album, Straight Outta Compton, sold 500,000 copies in six weeks after its release in August 1988.

6 … and then “the world’s most dangerous group”

Fuck tha Police was so incendiary that a censored version of the album was created, without the track. But what makes the song fascinating is its careful structure, with verses delivered as evidence in court. The concept and execution were Dre’s.

7 Dre lays down the law on weed

For the airplay-ready single Express Yourself, the Doctor rapped about how he wouldn’t dream of touching marijuana, because “it’s known to give a brother brain damage”. Incidentally, Charles Wright – around whose 1971 hit Express Yourself was built – was Eazy-E’s uncle.

8 Dre develops street soul

Michel’le was Dre’s girlfriend, and the mother of his third child. Her debut album, which he produced in 1989, minted the street-soul sound three years before Puffy and Mary J Blige.

9 The superstar who never was

The D.O.C. had contributed to Straight Outta Compton, and his 1989 solo debut No One Can Do It Better suggested his partnership with Dre would be a match made in reality-rap heaven – but a car crash and a crushed larynx silenced him for the rest of the century.

10 The first stirrings of g-funk

Above the Law’s leader, Cold 187um (Gregory Hutchinson), did most of the funk-sample-heavy production on their album Livin’ Like Hustlers, which Dre then came in to polish.Hutchinson, though, claims credit for the g-funk style Dre went on to popularise.

11 NWA drop Ice Cube

100 Miles and Runnin’ – a 70s cop show theme looking for a series – found NWA attacking recently departed founder member Ice Cube.Dre’s production made NWA sound great even when they were marking time.

12 Dre assaults Dee Barnes

Unhappy with a recent interview, Dre saw MTV presenter Dee Barnes at a party in December 1990 and, while his armed bodyguard kept other people away, he grabbed her by the hair and repeatedly slammed her head into a wall, then followed her into the ladies’ bathroom and beat her while she was on the floor. Barnes sued for $22.75m; Dre pleaded no contest, was fined $4,500 and sentenced to 240 hours’ community service. Barnes’s lawsuit was settled out of court. She said of Dre and the NWA members who said she had deserved to be assaulted: “They’ve grown up with the mentality that it’s OK to hit women, especially black women. Now there’s a lot of kids listening and thinking it’s OK to hit women who ‘get out of line’.”

13 The start of the east coast/west coast rap beef

It’s a footnote in rap history, but Ultramagnetic MCs member Tim Dog’s debut solo single Fuck Compton invented the east coast/west coast beef in 1991. “Dre beating on Dee from Pump it Up/ Step to the Dog and get fucked up,” he warned, without necessarily appreciating the irony.

14 Dre comes into his own as a producer

Alwayz Into Somethin’ was a highlight from NWA’s second album in 1991 and the first flowering of Dre’s mature production style. Every sonic element is in its distinct and precise place, all tied together with an analogue synth line as piercing as the LA sunshine.

15 Introducing … Snoop

While Dre was trying to leave NWA in 1992, he made his first solo single, Deep Cover, a steely, paranoid beat that gave newcomer Snoop Doggy Dogg’s spine-chilling blend of sing-song melody and lyrical malevolence its first airing.

16 From producer to pop star

Developing his template into something that both hardcore rap fans and pop audiences could grasp, Dre hit the motherlode in 1992 with Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang. It made him a pop star, reaching No 2 in the US.

17 A hip-hop landmark

In December 1992, The Chronic set a new benchmark for hip-hop. Rumours suggest Dre would spend days just getting a single cymbal sound right. His solo album featured Snoop heavily amid a host of new artists; it was sonic perfection, but often laced with lyrics of persistent and sustained hatefulness.
NWA in 1990

18 Snoop gets steered to stardom

Snoop’s debut album, 1993’s Doggystyle, turned the former Long Beach Crip gang member into a superstar.Dre’s perfectionist production ensured that mellifluous flow rode a custom-tooled sonic vehicle.

19 Dre wins his first Grammy

On The Chronic’s best single, Let Me Ride, Dre is cruising the southland in his 64 Chevy, swinging down in George Clinton’s chariot to give his folks a ride. He directed the (sexist) video, too. It didn’t become a big hit, though, until after Dre won the Grammy for best solo performance in 1994.

20 Dre and Cube make up

Rapprochement with Ice Cube coincided in 1994 with Death Row’s most megalomaniac moment – a soundtrack album to a short film based on Snoop’s song Murder Was The Case. Natural Born Killaz is one of Dre’s greatest productions, and helped bring the best out of Cube, too.

21 Death Row releases a woman!

The Lady of Rage had appeared on The Chronic and Doggystyle but she made her solo debut with the highlight – and sole Dre-produced track – on the Above the Rim soundtrack in 1994. Rage lived up to her name, even when she was talking (as on Afro Puffs) about her hairdo.

22 The collaboration that never was

Dre and Ice Cube’s Helter Skelter was trailed as the next Death Row album on the sleeve of Doggystyle, but it never materialised. According to Cube, not a single song was recorded.

23 2Pac make Death Row debut

California Love was a single where the video budget could keep a small country in schoolteachers for a year. 2Pac’s Death Row debut featured an opening verse from Dre, who was showing no signs of losing his knack for picking winners. It was a US No 1.

24 Dre looks for a new direction

With Death Row imploding, Dre was looking for a way out. 1995’s Keep Their Heads Ringin’, from the soundtrack of Ice Cube’s comedy movie, Friday, was cut from Natural Born Killaz/Afro Puffs future-funk cloth.

NWA: 'Our raps are documentary. We don't take sides'

25 From hip-hop to swingbeat

He’s only on it for eight lines, but Dre was the perfect addition to the daring single No Diggity by labelmate Teddy Riley’s swingbeat supergroup, Blackstreet.

26 Dre builds bridges to the east coast …

Striking out as Death Row crumbled, Dre teamed up with Nas for Nas is Coming, on his 1996 follow-up to Illmatic. “It’s strange, his music is strange, and it was kinda hard for me to write to it,” Nas said at the time. “We had to finish it in one day, because both of us were real busy. If I had the time I would have changed all the rhymes, the whole format of the way I came on the music, everything.”

27 … And tries to end the feud

East Coast/West Coast Killas, from the compilation album Dr Dre Presents the Aftermath, saw Dre collaborating with KRS-ONE, Nas, Cypress Hill’s B-Real and Houston rapper Scarface. It was supposed to put an end to the east/west feuding. It didn’t.

28 Dre launches his own label

After Death Row’s implosion, Dre cut a new deal for his own Aftermath label with the parent imprint Interscope. Been There, Done That, the single released in March 1997, promised a decisive break with gangsta rap.

29 The best cameo of his career

One of the least-known highlights of Dre’s career is Puppet Master, his contribution to the solo album by Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs.He has fine verse, and a star turn as a voodoo pope opposite B-Real’s gold-painted Beelzebub in the startling, Hieronymous Bosch meets Hammer Horror video.

30 Dre hits a slump

“The most anticipated since Tyson’s return,” was Dre’s verdict on Zoom, his 1998 collaboration with New York rap icon LL Cool J. The boasts were sounding tired, and though Zoom reached No 15 in the UK, it didn’t register on the Billboard Hot 100.

31 and 32 The triumphant return to end triumphant returns

Dre’s slump ended in 1999 when Interscope head Jimmy Iovine suggested he sign a white rapper by the name of Marshall Mathers. The first song they worked on together, My Name Is, changed rap and pop history. On Guilty Conscience, the third single from The Slim Shady LP, you can hear just by the beat that Dre was enjoying himself again; the vocal reinforces that, while – handily – reminding pop fans that he’s not just a producer.

33 Going back to his roots

With the Still D.R.E. single, featuring Snoop, Dre launched the new phase of his career with a single and video reassuring everyone that he had gone back to doing what he was doing in 1992.

34 The real second album arrives

Everyone had forgotten the Dr Dre Presents the Aftermath misstep, so 2001 – released in 1999, obviously – is widely considered Dre’s second LP. It’s actually his third. We’re still waiting for the fourth.

35 Dre v George Lucas

According to Lucasfilm, Dre’s opening sound effect on 2001, copied its trademarked Deep Note “audible logo” for THX cinema sound systems. It was reported that Lucasfilm was suing Dre: he said he had recreated it himself in the studio.

36 Dre and Eminem phone it in

It’s around 2000’s The Real Slim Shady that style bleeds into formula to the point where one can’t be discerned from the other. The telling moment is Eminem leaving a gap for Dre’s ad lib, and he’s not there.

37 Educating the internet

The Doctor settled his case with the online file-sharing service Napster on the same day as Metallica in July 2001, with Napster’s CEO telling press that the company “now understand[s] how important it is to Dr Dre to … be paid for the effort and talent that go into crafting his records”.

38 Two singles pioneer the hip-hop/R&B fusion

Listen to Eve’s Let Me Blow Ya Mind and Mary J Blige’s Family Affair – released just weeks apart in 2001 – and it’s clear how little Dre had to adapt to succeed in the pop-soul mainstream.

39 Old guard honours the new

With The Dr & the Diamond, one LA-based musical perfectionist doffed his cap to another. David Axelrod was also repaying a compliment (Dre sampled an Axelrod production on the 2001 album) by writing a song in honour of Dre.

From sneakers to speakers – how the new Beats generation is making a mint

40 Another album goes MIA

Promised, at various times, to be a hip-hop musical, “the most advanced rap album of all time”, and his final album, Detox remains as distant a dream as ever. Having invented reality rap, Dre has managed to create hip-hop’s most enduring myth.

41 Back to the top

Next off the production line, in 2002, was New Yorker Curtis Jackson, AKA 50 Cent. His first album after signing to Eminem’s Shady label broke sales records and its Dre-produced lead single, In Da Club, represented a new peak for the Doctor.

42 Superstar bloat

The Watcher 2, from Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 2 featured Dre, Rakim and Truth Hurts, a line-up that still sets the rap fiend’s pulse racing, yet doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its considerable parts.

43 Aftermath rolls out the formula

By the time The Game debuted with Westside Story in 2004, the set-up for Dre’s Aftermath label was standard – a Dre production for his first single, with the label’s most recent heavy hitter – 50 Cent, in this case – guesting.

44 Dre proves he can still cut the mustard

On Legend of the Fall Offs, the final track of Busta Rhymes’ first album for Aftermath – which entered the US charts at No 1 – Dre made a beat out of the sound of soil being shoveled on to a coffin lid. When the mood took him, he was still a peerless sonic innovator.

45 Beatmaker to Beats tycoon

It was an odd combination – a producer and a company that made audio cables – but the Beats headphone range, launched in 2008, has proved Dre’s commercial clout extends beyond making music. Audiophiles have sneered, but the Beats range has become a bestseller and, in combination with his Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine, Dre has expanded the Beats brand into streaming.

46 Back to the underground

A mogul he may have become, but the Caribbean-flavoured single Catalina by Raekwon showed that elements of Dre’s signature style were still a snug fit within rap’s underground.

47 Yet another album goes MIA

In 2010, Dre announced The Planets, an instrumental album with each piece named after one of the planets in the solar system. Add this to the list of Dre projects we’re not really expecting to ever hear.

48 Dre gets back in the charts in his own right

I Need a Doctor, featuring Eminem and Skylar Grey, was reputed to be from the still-unheard Detox album. Released as a single in 2011, it gave Dre his first US top 10 hit as an artist since 1995.

49 Dre becomes the richest man in rap

Apple’s purchase last year of Beats by Dr Dre, valued at $3bn, saw Dre leapfrog Sean “Puffy” Combs to become rap’s richest mogul. He doesn’t even need to make music anymore.

50 Dre at the movies

We thought we’d already seen an NWA film – the 1993 Chris Rock mockumentary CB4 was clearly “inspired” by Dre’s group. But F Gary Gray, director of Death Row’s Murder Was The Case short, has made Straight Outta Compton, a real biopic that is out this August. Corey Hawkins, a Juilliard graduate, will play Dre. Naturally, the film has had its troubles, with former Death Row founder Suge Knight charged with murder following an attempt to visit the set.

This will do for a birthday pic -

The hit-run video leaked, steam-rolling video -

Bone might not walk again -

Earlier this week:

Mob lawyer Kenner not representing, Suge told off by the judge, leaning over trash cans to puke, claiming to be turning into Mr Magoo etc..

Quote:'Suge' Knight says in court he can't see or 'comprehend' what's happening
"Rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight was transported to a jail infirmary Monday after saying in court that he couldn't "really comprehend" what was happening.

Earlier in the day, Knight, who is being held on murder and attempted-murder charges in a hit-and-run case, for the first time spoke in court, announcing that attorney David Kenner was no longer defending him. He then went on to describe his medical ailments.

Kenner was hired after Knight fired James E. Blatt, who represented him immediately after he was arrested.

Wearing an orange jumpsuit and eyeglasses, Knight asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Brandlin if he could speak, then said he couldn't see and had lost weight.

“Since I have been here," he said, "I’ve lost about 30 pounds.”

As he stood in front of Brandlin, he shifted back and forth.

“I can’t really see," Knight said. "I can’t really comprehend what’s going on."


During the hearing, Knight spoke over Brandlin as the judge spoke, prompting a sharp response. He continued to interrupt Brandlin and mumbled during the proceeding. At one point during the hearing, Knight asked for a trash can and leaned over it.

Shortly after the hearing, where Brandlin ruled that all of Knight’s future court hearings would happen in downtown L.A., Knight was transported to the infirmary. Another hearing was scheduled after the first, but Knight did not attend that proceeding.

Last month, Knight was taken to a hospital twice -- once each after two hearings related to his case. In one of the visits, he said he was suffering from stomach problems.

Knight is charged with running over two men with his car at Tam's Burgers in Compton on Jan. 29. Terry Carter, 55, died, and Cle "Bone" Sloan, 51, was injured in the incident.

He also faces charges in a case in which prosecutors say he and comedian Katt Williams stole a camera from an independent celebrity photographer on Sept. 5, 2014.

Brandlin ordered future hearings in both cases to be held in downtown Los Angeles. Moving the case involving the camera, which had been heard at the airport courthouse, would ease stress on staff and on Knight's transportation, he said."

'Sugar Bear' needs his own biopic movie.

Looking incredible...

It looks good. Hope it is.

Dr. Dre, Ice Cube Break Silence on N.W.A Movie, Suge Knight's Murder Charge and a Reunion Tour (With Eminem) - Hollywood Reporter

Quote:Dr. Dre, Ice Cube Break Silence on N.W.A Movie, Suge Knight's Murder Charge and a Reunion Tour (With Eminem)



I'm mustering the nerve to ask Dr. Dre and Ice Cube about the slaying that happened during the shooting of a Straight Outta Compton trailer — about the day in January when Suge Knight turned up on the set and allegedly plowed his pickup truck over two men, including a technical adviser on the film — when the lights go out.

We're in a photo studio in Hollywood in mid-July, a month before the release of Universal's $29 million movie telling the (mostly) true story of N.W.A, the groundbreaking hip-hop group that Dre, Cube and three other rappers — Eazy-E, MC Ren and DJ Yella — formed during the 1980s. Dre, now 50, is sitting on a comfy sofa, fussing with the cuffs of his designer jeans. Thirty years ago, he was producing N.W.A's signature song, "F— tha Police"; today, he's a headphones tycoon who lives in Tom Brady's former mansion in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. Cube, now a 46-year-old comic action actor-producer (Ride Along, 21 Jump Street), is leaning against a wall, sipping a cappuccino with extra sugar. A few others are picking around the Caesar salad with grilled chicken at a snack table when suddenly — wham! — there's a loud popping sound and the place goes completely dark.

"What the f— just happened?" asks a voice that sounds like Dre's.

"This is the zombie apocalypse," says another. "It's The Walking Dead: The N.W.A Edition."

It turns out a transformer has blown on nearby Cole Street, and the whole block is without power. It will remain so for the better part of an hour. Which is how my interview with Dre and Cube and some of the actors who star in Straight Outta Compton — Corey Hawkins (who plays young Dre), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (also known as Cube's son) and Jason Mitchell (as Eazy-E) — takes place entirely in the dark. With the only flicker of light coming from Dre's gleaming Rolex, the producers and stars of the film talk thoughtfully — sometimes angrily — about the difficult 13-year journey it took for Straight Outta Compton to get to the screen. How it went through two studios, overcame decades-old feuds, underwent countless rewrites — not to mention an alleged vehicular homicide ("a really tragic incident," says Dre) — and still was filming in North Hollywood as little as three weeks ago to finally emerge intact for its Aug. 14 opening date.

"It's crazy how we were getting criticized for this years ago," says Dre of N.W.A's provocative songs about inner-city life. "And now, it's just like, 'OK, we understand.' This movie will keep shining a light on the problem, especially because of all the situations that are happening in Ferguson and here in Los Angeles. It’s definitely going to keep this situation in people’s minds and make sure that everyone out there knows that this is a problem that keeps happening still today."

In 1986, it was morning in America. Ronald Reagan was in the middle of his second term. Top Gun was breaking box-office records. Bill Cosby was the most beloved TV star in the country. But in Compton, Calif., five black kids, including Andre Young (Dre), O'Shea Jackson Sr. (Cube) and Eric Wright (Eazy-E), were inventing gangsta rap in South Central clubs, creating a wholly new form of music made up of shockingly raw stories of police brutality and other urban blights. Their incendiary lyrics ("a young n—a on the warpath, and when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath of cops, dyin' in L.A.") landed N.W.A (which stands for "N—az With Attitude") on FBI watch lists, incurred the moral wrath of media crusaders like Tipper Gore and got their music banned from scores of radio stations and record stores. Still, their first album, 1988's Straight Outta Compton, managed to sell 3 million copies and go double platinum. If hip-hop had one Big Bang-like birth, an explosive moment when it first emerged as a serious, sustainable art form, this was it.

"It was always about free speech, being able to express yourself, whether people like it or not," recalls Cube of N.W.A's early raps (the group made four albums before they broke up in 1991). "That's the great thing about being in this country, is to be able to speak your mind and not be censored."

Of course, a lot has changed in three decades. America has an African-American president; Cosby no longer is so beloved (nor lecturing rap stars on how to behave). Yet a lot has stayed the same. There's still police brutality and race riots; Tom Cruise is developing a Top Gun sequel. But the world has changed enough, it seems, that a major Hollywood studio could decide to spend $29 million on a film about a musical group that once rapped in favor of violence against the police and wrote songs with titles like "One Less Bitch." Somewhere between the '80s and the 2010s, N.W.A went from being public enemy No. 1 to marketable mainstream entertainment in multiplexes in every neighborhood in the country.

"I've always been very intrigued by the [N.W.A] story," says Universal chief Donna Langley. "It was really just about finding a rational business model with which to greenlight it."

Long before Universal was on board, one of the obstacles to a rational business model was the fact that the N.W.A members aren't always on speaking terms, let alone willing to collaborate. They've been involved in feuds upon feuds, the biggest dating back to 1996, when Dre walked away from his ownership stake in Death Row Records at the height of its ascent, leaving a reported $50 million on the table and infuriating his Death Row partner Suge Knight — bad blood that clearly lingers today. N.W.A founding member Eazy-E, who started the group's label, Ruthless Records, and controlled the rights to N.W.A's music, died in 1995 at age 31 of AIDS. He left his wife, Tomica Woods-Wright, in charge of the group's musical legacy as well as his own life rights. Anybody inter­ested in making an N.W.A movie would have to get her on board first, then the rest of the gang. ("Ultimately, I’m very pleased with the film,” says Woods-Wright, who is a producer on Compton.)

The first ones to try were a writer named Alan Wenkus and documentarian named S. Leigh Savidge. They began writing a Straight Outta Compton screenplay together in 2002, focusing mostly on Eazy-E's story, got Woods-Wright to sign on and sold it to New Line in 2006. Cube joined the project in 2007 as a producer, but wanted the character based on his life to have a bigger role in the plot (naturally). Cube hired a new writer (Andrea Berloff, who wrote Oliver Stone's World Trade Center), brought Dre aboard and turned it into a drama with three equal leads — Eazy-E, Dre and himself. (DJ Yella and MC Ren, the fourth and fifth members of the group, are in the film but only as peripheral characters.) F. Gary Gray, director of The Italian Job — and a South Central native who had been collaborating with Cube since his 1991 solo video "True to the Game" — was hired to direct. It looked for sure as if a green light was imminent.

"I sat with Dre for hours, sometimes days, going over what happened," says Gray. " 'Tell me the story again. Tell me who was there. Tell me why this happened and what were you thinking and what was your motivation and what do you think Eazy was thinking.' I didn't want people to watch the movie and feel like they didn't learn anything beyond what they could find on Google."

But just as it was all coming together, New Line ceased to exist as an autonomous studio. In 2008, its distribution operations were absorbed by parent company Warner Bros. And the guy who was then running Warners, Jeff Robinov, didn't want to make an N.W.A movie for more than $15 million. The prevailing wisdom at that time was that movies about African-Americans didn't play well overseas. Cube told Robinov where he could put his $15 million. "It wouldn't be worth doing," he says of New Line's budget. "We wouldn't be giving the project the justice it needs."

Warner Bros. decided it wouldn't make Straight Outta Compton at the budget Cube and Dre were envisioning. But it turned out Langley at Universal would. "I would argue that everybody knows hip-hop," says Langley, explaining why she's convinced Straight Outta Compton will fill theaters overseas as well as at home. "There probably isn't a culture in the world that doesn't engage with [rap] in some way. We were looking through that lens, as opposed to handicapping it as an 'urban' film."

Langley put her money where her mouth was, ponying up a budget of $29 million for the R-rated film and keeping Gray on as director. But she did have a problem with the script: It wasn't edgy enough. She brought in another writer, Jonathan Herman, to do a major overhaul. Ironically, it was Herman, a 42-year-old gay Jewish scribe from Greenwich, Conn. -- seemingly a background as far as one could get from the Compton origins story -- who finally cracked the story. He spent weeks with Dre and Cube, coaxing out their memories and learning their speech patterns. Dre, for one, took the additional research in stride. "It had a great potential of being done wrong and f—ing up our legacy," he says. "Our legacy is something that's very important to me."

Filming began even before Gray had found his cast. To qualify for California tax breaks, Gray had to shoot at least one day of footage before April 2014. So he shot an interview with Cube and Dre in South Central (it plays over the film's closing credits). Of course, many hip-hop biopics cast the rappers themselves in the lead roles — Eminem in 8 Mile, 50 Cent in Get Rich or Die Tryin' — but by 2014, Dre and Cube were too old to play themselves as rising stars. Instead, Gray held a nationwide search for an unknown to play Dre; the role went to Hawkins, a classically trained Juilliard actor from Washington, D.C. But to fill the part of Cube, they didn't need to look far: "I know a lot of people thought I was just throwing him in there 'cause I could," says Cube of the casting of his 24-year-old son. "But that wasn't the case. I knew he was right for this."

Says Jackson: "My father would call me before each scene to let me know what he was thinking. A lot of it was getting me to not act. I have so much of his mannerisms and things already in me that I wouldn't want to be onscreen doing an impersonation. You can do an impersonation or you could become the character. I really was trying to break down those acting walls and just let everything flow."

Ice Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr., plays his rap star dad (picture here in his younger days) in the film.

Principal photography — with actual actors, not just the producers interviewing one another — began in August 2014 in Compton. "I haven't lived in Compton for quite a while, but it felt great," says Dre, who was on the set as a producer nearly every day of the production. "Everybody was really excited about the fact that we were not only making a movie but making it in Compton. It feels like Compton is another character."

Sometimes an unpredictable character: Although production went smoothly for the most part, there apparently was a random drive-by shooting early on in front of the set that left one civilian injured.

One of the biggest challenges of making Straight Outta Compton, it turned out, was cramming three decades' worth of N.W.A's struggles, triumphs, infighting and eventual breakup, as well as Eazy-E's death, into a two-hour, 22-minute film. Initial cuts clocked in at more than three hours. A scene referencing Cube's sister, who was killed by her police-officer boyfriend in 1981 — a fact that adds some con­text to his anti-police lyrics — ended up on the editing-room floor. "We had to make sure we wasn't going off into those nooks and crannies," says Cube with a shrug.

But even as important B-stories were being sliced from the final cut, it became clear to Gray and Cube and even Universal that something was missing: Test audiences were confused by Dre's big split with Knight's record company in 1996. Why did Dre leave Death Row and spark the historic, still lingering feud? It was not made clear. So, in late June, with two weeks before the movie had to be locked for its August release, Gray filmed a scene in which Dre walks into a room and witnesses Knight (played by R. Marcos Taylor, a stunt man turned actor with a strong resemblance to the real Knight) calmly smoking a cigar as he uses a vicious pit bull to terrorize a cowering man in his underwear. "I was like, 'What the f— is going on?' " recalls Dre of the actual event that inspired that last-minute scene. "I was ready to leave anyways. This was the extra push. The guy in the underwear — all this shit actually happened."

A judge recently declined to lower the $10 million bail for Knight (left) for the January slaying of a 'Straight Outta Compton' adviser near the set of a trailer for the movie. It was “a really tragic incident,” says Dre.

As far as anyone knows, Knight never tried to get onto the set of Straight Outta Compton. But the 50-year-old rap mogul did show up during filming of a promotional trailer being shot in Compton on Jan. 29, a few months after production had wrapped on the movie. Knight was ushered away from the premises by security. But he didn't go far. A few blocks from the set, he got into a confrontation with Cle "Bone" Sloan, a technical adviser on the trailer. At one point during the argument, Knight allegedly climbed into his pickup truck, turned over the engine and deliberately ran over Sloan as well as Terry Carter, a former business associate of Cube. Sloan was hospitalized but eventually recuperated. Carter was killed at the scene.

"I was there. But I was just leaving, so I didn't know what happened until I was halfway home," says Dre, who shares his Brentwood mansion with his wife of 19 years, Nicole Young. "I heard about it over the phone. Everybody was supportive everywhere we went, and we didn't have one issue throughout the entire filming of the movie. It's crazy that this happened during the f—ing filming of the commercial."

Cube, who wasn't on the set, takes a more philosophical view. "It's the dangerous part of living in South Central," he says. "Some people don't care if you're making a movie or not. It's unfortunate because the movie is so good, so creative, so many talented people involved."

Knight, who has clashed with the law many times in the past — including serving a five-year sentence for parole violations — claims he accidentally ran over the men while attempting to flee the confrontation. He's currently being held in L.A.'s Men's Central Jail, awaiting trial on murder and attempted murder charges, with the possibility of life in prison if convicted. His most recent hearing was July 17, when a judge refused to lower his bail from $10 million. His next hearing is Sept. 17. No trial date has been set.

"It's just a really unfortunate incident," says Dre. "Maybe [Knight] was looking for trouble. I don't know."

The tragic episode under­scores what a delicate line Universal must walk with Straight Outta Compton. The founders of N.W.A may be respectable members of society now­­adays — indeed, one earned $500 million for selling his headphone company, Beats, to Apple, another is a movie star who has shared the screen with George Clooney and Kevin Hart — but the rap group they created 30 years ago still carries echoes from its violent past. And that past reverberates with today's headlines, from the Ferguson unrest to Eric Garner in New York to Ezell Ford in Los Angeles. "It shows that we were not only ahead of our time, but right on time," says Cube. "It’s a constant situation between the powers that be and the neighborhoods we’ve come from. And most of the time you look and you see that it’s a thing where someone is abusing their authority or abusing their power and they’re shitting around."

Langley agrees "there are things in the movie playing themselves out in the news today." But she's quick to point out that "the movie is not a call to arms against the police or anything like that. It's a very classic story. You fall in love with these boys. You love the characters. You're so on their side. You see that the music was born out of a frustration about their surroundings and environment."

Asked if members of law enforcement will find the film controversial, Cube responds sarcastically, “Oh, they're gonna love it. True story. Inspired by them. I mean, why wouldn't they love it? It's what they do. They're not misrepresented. True that.”

Controversy or no controversy, Langley is so gung ho about the film that her studio is planning on doing something nobody in the rap world thought was possible — reuniting N.W.A for a European tour to promote the movie, with Eminem (who performs on the film's soundtrack, along with Dre and Kendrick Lamar) sitting in as an honorary member. "We don't have anything settled yet with everyone's schedules," she says. "But we think it can create a lot of buzz."

After the lights finally flicker back on in the photo studio, Dre marvels about the past, about where he comes from and how remarkably far his music has traveled. "We were just trying to entertain our neighborhood, just us trying to be hood stars," he says. "It just became something that was much, much bigger than we ever thought, than I ever imagined.