NWA
The Most Influential Artists: #4 N.W.A.
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #4. From Compton, California, here is N.W.A. CREDIT: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images Few groups with long, prolific careers have changed the world as much as N.W.A. did with two albums and an EP. Like the similarly short-lived Sex Pistols a decade earlier, N.W.A. leveraged shock value to make a cultural impact far beyond what could be explained by record sales. Upping the ante from the vague tough guy theatricality of predecessors like Run-DMC, whose street cred was mainly derived from leather jackets and loud voices, N.W.A. turned Compton into an object of fear and fascination in the popular imagination. Gangsta rap has continued to inspire moral panic over the last three decades, bu...
