Nearly three decades after N.W.A first crash-landed pop culture, the crossover is finally complete. While the W0rld’s Most Dangerous Group sold over three million copies of debut album Straight Outta Compton, topped the Billboard 200 with follow-up Efil4zaggin, and permanently changed the course of rap in the process, they never had a single hit the Hot 100 during their original run, remaining sequestered to the Rap and R&B charts in the States.
Well, no longer. Thanks to increased interest in the group’s music as a result of their smash Straight Outta Compton biopic (and an ensuing surge in downloads), N.W.A has charted their first-ever Top 40 hit, with the movie’s title cut. Upon its original release, the song was too flammable to make any chart in the states, but this week it hits the Hot 100 as the Hot Shot Debut, going all the way to No. 38.
“Straight Outta Compton” is this week’s Hot Shot Debut, 27 years after its release. N.W.A’s first Hot 100 hit. pic.twitter.com/1tZYjMJcdn
— Al Shipley (@alshipley) August 25, 2015
Congrats to N.W.A on their long-overdue Top 40 success, and we look forward to seeing the song continue to surge in popularity, until it becomes pop music’s all-time least likely Song of the Late-Summer.
