Casting 'Straight Outta Compton,' the Movie

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It’s been more than 25 years since the groundbreaking rap group NWA released the controversial album “Straight Outta Compton.”

Beginning with the now-famous sentence, “You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge,” the record is widely credited as launching the gangsta rap genre.

This summer production is scheduled to begin on a movie about the group’s rise to fame.

An open casting call for the film “Straight Outta Compton” was held recently in a crowded community center gymnasium in South Los Angeles, where NWA has its roots.

Hundreds of young African-American men showed up on a hot Sunday afternoon to audition for the film. Most were born after the album’s 1988 release. Many came dressed like NWA rapper Eazy-E, with his trademark black Raiders hat, Jheri curls, sunglasses and gold chains. Eazy-E died of AIDS in 1995 at the age of 31.

Joseph Word, 18, was here for his first-ever audition. Word wants to play NWA founding member Dr. Dre in the movie.

“I feel like he was the leader, and because they gave us stories about the 'hood,” Word said. “Real stories about what was going on in the world at that time.”

In the era of Reagan, AIDS and the crack epidemic, the NWA song “F--- tha Police” put NWA — and Compton — on the map. The FBI was worried enough to send the group’s label a warning letter. The anti-police rhetoric foreshadowed the Rodney King beating and the L.A. riots four years later.

“It teaches it’s not always good in the world, sometimes it's gritty, sometimes it's stank,” said Joe Bryant, 23, who grew up in Compton. “But you gotta suck it up and you really gotta hit your hustle or whatever you do, it’s legal or not legal, you gotta do it best that your capability, because if you don’t, you just gonna be a dog that got ate.”

That’s the attitude that F. Gary Gray, the director of the film “Straight Outta Compton,” is looking for.

“It’s just a certain thing that a person from the 'hood has, you know. It’s just that thing,” Gray said. “You know, when you watch ‘American Idol’ and there’s that ‘it factor,’ there’s a hood factor, and you get the authenticity when you’re in environments like this when you have an open call, and I’m seeing it and I’m pretty happy with it.”

In interviews at the time, NWA liked to call themselves “street reporters.” But plenty of Compton residents didn’t like their message.

“Maybe some of the content of their messages, you know, black-on-black crime, or drugs, or things of that nature, that they didn’t really find that healthy,” said Ben “Taco” Owens, an ex-member of the Crips gang who now helps former gang members start over. "But basically for some others, they felt that they came real, they came raw, and told the story of what the hood life is like.”

The homicide rate in Compton is down by half since 2000, although violent crime is still more than double the national average. A quarter of its residents lives below the poverty line. The factors that helped make NWA a possibility are still very present today.

“It’s not unlike ‘The Social Network’ or ‘American Graffiti,’ where you take a place and time in America, and you see the pivot that America took in entertainment,” said filmmaker Gray. “We went from Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince to hip-hop, and this is the time that marks that shift in that era.”

With the release of this movie, NWA’s story is poised to reach a much wider audience. The film’s production company, Universal, plans to release “Straight Outta Compton” in 2015.

More: Photos from the "Straight Outta Compton" movie casting call (KCRW)