Straight Outta Boring

Compton Is an Icon of the West Coast Ghetto, But That May Be One of the Greatest Marketing Tricks of Our Time

Don’t believe all the hype around Straight Outta Compton.

Reading about the new hit movie about the groundbreaking rap group N.W.A., you might think the biggest problem facing Compton is its unfair and outdated reputation for the violence and gangs that were the subjects of N.W.A.’s music. But today, Compton may have a bigger problem: the reality that it’s boring.

The Compton depicted in the film, which topped the box office in its debut week, is scarily entertaining—a mix of menace and schemes and murder. In this, it fits decades …