"And if you don't like how I'm living, well f*** you..." NWA exploded onto the scene in 1988 with "Straight Outta Compton," the album that invented gangsta rap. Ice Cube, Eazy E, Dre and their legions of subsequent protégés presented themselves as street soldiers ready to die, telling harrowing tales of violence and mayhem. Many, of course, were simply "studio gangstas," but two high-profile shootings in the mid-'90s suddenly made the fantasy frighteningly real. But the genre's success lay in its unmatched ability to sell records — primarily to middle-class kids in white suburbs.

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