SANDY'S REVIEW: Straight Outta Compton

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Their music made history 30 years ago. I'm proud to say I was there to watch it happen and pleased to tell you that a new movie captures the period just about perfectly, though the real superstars portrayed by actors here were more charismatic.

Working in Los Angeles during the late 1980's, I first became aware of new form of hip-hop which came to be called "gangsta rap" and came to report one of the first national stories on the new genre. I had the privilege of hearing first hand from N.W.A. how the rappers saw themselves as reporters.

The beats were as mean as the streets when the members of N.W.A came "Straight Outta Compton" California to take the country by storm in the 1980's.

Then as now the best of their raps cannot be repeated on TV due to their use of explicit language, but what really caused controversy was their hostility towards the police, and given what happened one year ago in Ferguson and elsewhere since, a drama from decades ago has never seemed more timely.

The late rapper Easy E. was originally a drug dealer who financed a group that contained future superstars Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, played in the movie by his real son.

Oshea Jackson Jr. is just as good as everyone else, which is to say very good.

N.W.A. came to represent what was called "West Coast Rap" and started a rivalry with east coast hip hop that grew violent. The storyline embodied by the scary "Suge" Knight.

The movie sounds like it might be too long at two hours and a half, but it held my interest at that length and my friend Tracey Bagley agrees. She's the producer of the show "Here and Now" ABC 7 and Tracey calls "Straight Outta Compton" powerful, adding she appreciated the humor, the love and the strong bond shown between the gangsta rappers of N.W.A.