10 Most Frontloaded Albums In Rock History
2. NWA - Straight Outta Compton
It’s an album that changed hip hop, frightened mainstream America with its street knowledge, and made lifetime stars of Ice Cube and Dr Dre. In ways both good and bad, it’s all too clear that this was a band riding a wave of sudden success and looking to capitalise on it as quickly as they could.
Straight Outta Compton hangs together as a piece - the songs all bear stylistic and thematic similarity, to wit huge booming beats and tales of life in L.A’s underbelly. But they play their hand incredibly hard with their opening salvo and the album simply doesn’t have enough material to ever return to that point.
As a trio of songs to start a record, the title track, “F*** The Police”, and “Gangsta Gangsta” are nigh untouchable. In these three tunes we’re introduced to Dre’s much imitated production, the verbose brilliance of leader Ice Cube, wildcard Eazy E, and the (less important) rest of the team.
It’s always going to be downhill from there, and while there are gems elsewhere on the album, cuts like "Quiet On tha Set" are filler, and “Express Yourself” gives Dre a chance to grab the mic that he doesn’t really merit.