Happy 30th Anniversary to Compton’s Most Wanted’s debut album It’s A Compton Thang, originally released May 24, 1990.
With the success of N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton (1988), the rest of the record industry began snapping up much of the hip-hop talent that the greater Los Angeles area had to offer. One of these groups was Compton’s Most Wanted, a five-person collective of rappers, producers, and DJs.
But while N.W.A burned bright and imploded by late 1991, CMW has endured to become one of the most consistent and longest-standing West Coast crews around. Their debut album It’s A Compton Thang, released 30 years ago, offered an early indication of what the crew would become: one of the best Southern California crews of all time.
Though CMW has always been thought of as a gangsta rap group, there isn’t a lot of “gangsta” content on It’s A Compton Thang. At least initially, CMW seem to have been given the gangsta rap label because of their city of origin. Both Aaron “MC Eiht” Tyler and Vernon “Tha Chill MC” Johnson spend much of their time on the album touting their skills on the mic. Sure, they raise some ruckus, but It’s A Compton Thang hardly sports a high body count on record. Instead, the two emcees were much more likely to chronicle their weed and liquor-fueled misadventures than they were to explore bringing havoc to their rivals.
As emcees, Eiht and Chill complemented each other well. Eiht sports a smoother voice and more laid-back flow, whereas Chill is more aggressive. However, the pair could easily modulate their styles, with Eiht getting a little rough on the mic while Chill dialed it down and got more relaxed. The two worked well as unit, their styles easily meshing.
The production on It’s A Compton Thang is strong, handled by Terry “DJ Slip” Allen and Andre “DJ Unknown” Manuel. By the late 1980s, Unknown was a Los Angeles O.G., coming up under the legendary Alonzo Williams, becoming a member of the World Class Wrecking Cru. As a pioneer in the electro funk and gangsta rap scenes, he created the Techno Hop label and worked with Ice-T during the early ’80s. During the late ’80s, DJ Slip had begun working with Unknown, producing tracks for numerous artists on Techno Hop.
The two create beats steeped in the break-beat traditionalism of golden era hip-hop, but infuse them with crawling west coast funk. The group also enlists Mike “DJ Mike Tee” Bryant to work behind the turntables, who replaced DJ Ant-Capone during the recording process. The result of all of their efforts is an album that’s a little rough around the edges, but ends up being a solid first draft. CMW were still working out their identity as a crew, but they proved more than capable of making dope music nevertheless.
The first song CMW released as a group was “Rhymes Too Funky,” which appeared on the DJ Slip-produced The Compton Compilation – The Sound Control Mob "Under Investigation” (1989). The track is rough, with Eiht and Chill trading rhymes over a gritty drum track and stabs from the JBs’ “Blow Your Head.” It’s framed as a live song, with the pair supposedly rhyming on the street corner in the middle of the night while getting heckled by a neighborhood resident.
It’s A Compton Thang features “Pt. 1” of the five-minute song, but Eiht and Chill pack a powerful punch in those first two and a half minutes. Chill rhymes, “Give no slack to no plaque or no punk new jack / Get racked like that because your rhymes are wack / So hit me with your best shot, and boy, you’ll see / How Tha Chill and the Eiht drop punk emcees.”
“This Is Compton,” the group’s first official single, is a rollicking hardcore jam where the two emcees celebrate the city of their birth and sing their own praises. Both Eiht and Chill are infectious on the mic, with Tha Chill rapping, “I don’t play, ’cause I slay all rap suckers / Down with E, killing rookie motherfuckers,” and Eiht reminding doubters that he “represents the place with the bass / The beat you won’t beat, you’re just a disgrace.” The song features one of the earliest and best uses of the drums and piano from Lee Dorsey’s version of “Get Out My Life Woman.”
Though those tracks may have initially introduced CMW to a wider audience, It’s A Compton Thang is best known for “One Time Gaffled Em Up,” their first single distributed through Orpheus. The single is a two-verse solo track by Eiht, where he describes a pair of hostile encounters with the LAPD. Rapping over a slowed down sample of the JBs’ “You Can Have Watergate Just Gimme Some Bucks and I'll Be Straight,” Eiht vents his frustration over police harassment, while describing the intricacies of life in Compton as a young Black male.
As mentioned earlier, much of It’s A Compton Thang is built on Eiht and Chill’s lyrical exhibition. Tracks like “I’m Wit Dat” and “Final Chapter” both move at a more deliberate pace, while “I Give Up Nuthin,” another Eiht solo track, is a virtual sprint across the drum breakdown and harmonica solo from the Sound Experience’s “Devil With the Bust.”
On “I Mean Biznez”, Slip transforms a sample of Lee Dorsey’s “A Lover is Born” for a rugged, no-nonsense battle rap track, highlighted by Eiht proclaiming, “I’m kinda pissed off, because you thought we was flops / What? It’s CMW, punk, it's time to get mopped.” On “Give It Up,” DJ Slip uses a sample of the Lee Dorsey track of the same name (someone must have left a Dorsey greatest hits collection in the studio or something), while Eiht and Chill drop their extremely explicit sex raps.
“Duck Sick” signified the early stages of the long feud between Eiht and fellow-Compton artist DJ Quik. Quik had dissed the then fledgling crew on The Red Tape mixtape. The song’s title became infamous as a slick dig at Quik (just transpose the first letters in the song’s two-word title for a hint), which would carry forward on other CMW projects. Over the next half decade, the beef would get considerably heated, but this time out, Eiht and Chill keep things relatively mellow, throwing darts at the unnamed Quik over a sample of Billy Cobham’s “The Red Baron.”
It would be inaccurate to say that CMW invented g-funk, but they were among the first to release West Coast rider music, mixing quiet storm R&B with laid-back rhyme flows. On “Late Nite Hype,” against the background of a sample of Anita Baker’s “Will You Be Mine,” Eiht and Chill share stories about drinking, smoking, carousing, and engaging in sexual liaisons during the small hours of the night. It’s the precursor to tracks like “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” or “You Know How We Do It,” and is a stylistic counterpoint to the aforementioned “Give It Up.”
It’s A Compton Thang ends with the title cut, a four-verse epic solo track by Eiht. Musically, it’s in the same vein as “Late Night Hype,” with Eiht flowing over an early use of the sample from Juicy’s “Sugar Free.” Though much of Eiht’s center on his abilities as an emcee, he uses the track to explain his undying loyalty to the city of his birth, rapping, “It's mandatory that I can rock your world with C / ’Cause to me there is no world outside the C-P-T.”
Even better things were to come as a group for CMW after It’s A Compton Thang, even though they initially faced a serious setback. Tha Chill served two years in prison and was therefore absent from the group’s two subsequent albums. However, the group was able to re-position itself with Eiht serving as the clear frontman. He subsequently continued to develop a dynamic identity as an emcee, leading to the success of album’s like Straight Checkn’ ’Em (1991) and Music To Driveby (1992).
Eiht is now a universally respected O.G. and CMW is one of the longest-standing groups of its kind. Though the crew and MC Eiht continued to improve in their respective fields after the release of this album, their raw talent was very much apparent throughout It’s A Compton Thang. CMW may have been a work in progress with this album, but their early material definitely deserves its due respect.
Note: As an Amazon affiliate partner, Albumism may earn commissions from purchases of products featured on our site.
LISTEN: