Happy 30th Anniversary to N.W.A’s second & final studio album Efil4zaggin, originally released May 28, 1991.

Thirty years ago, the release of N.W.A’s Efil4zaggin closely coincided with a development that changed the modern music industry. Namely, just weeks before the “World’s Most Dangerous Group” put out their second long player, Billboard began using Soundscan technology to determine the composition of their charts. With the help of this new system, N.W.A contributed to changing how labels perceived the selling power of rap music.

For years, Billboard determined the rankings mostly by relying upon the honor system. Representatives from Billboard would call up record stores around the country and speak with the managers to determine the best-selling albums at the store during that particular week. This practice was prone to corruption, with both stores and record labels finding ways to game the system. Retailers could, and did, fudge numbers and misreport sales based on efforts to clear the shelves of under-selling releases. Record labels could, and did, bribe managers of record store chains in order to over-report the sales of certain albums.

Soundscan was pitched as a way to provide an accurate view of what consumers were purchasing and remove any and all impropriety. Billboard would rely on the numbers that they’d receive via the record store’s computer connection to Soundscan. So, starting in late May 1991, the Billboard charts began to function more or less like it was reporting weekly film box office totals, but for albums.

The change was immediate, and frankly, shocking at the time. Some traditional pop acts immediately disappeared. Meanwhile, “genre” albums, by Country, Heavy Metal, and Hip-Hop artists quickly rocketed up the charts. Record labels initially hated the new reality, and pushed back heavily, often in the name of “artist development” and reported bias against Mom and Pop outlets. It proved to be for naught, as the use of Soundscan took hold and hasn’t ceased.

An early illustration of how things were changing under the new system was the release of N.W.A’S Efil4zaggin. It debuted on the Billboard Charts at #2, then unheard of for a hip-hop record, after selling over 900,000 copies in a week. The next week, it moved into the #1 spot, dethroning Paula Abdul’s Spellbound.

A week later, Efil4zaggin was bumped out of its top slot by Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind, demonstrating the volatility now baked into the Billboard charts. However, the initial point was made: A group of foul-mouthed “gangstas” from Compton rushed up on a pop princess, knocking her off of her perch. And they did it with an album that received no substantial radio airplay and not nearly as much mainstream promotion. Hip-hop groups like N.W.A, with their, shall-we-say, highly uncompromised content, were now as commercially viable as America’s sweethearts.

Even though N.W.A only recorded two full albums together, they’re correctly considered one of the most influential hip-hop groups of all time. Originally comprised of Eric “Eazy-E” Wright, Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, Lorenzo “MC Ren” Patterson, O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson, and Antoine “DJ Yella” Carraby, they set hip-hop on its head with Straight Outta Compton(1988). The multi-platinum album depicted an unflinching view of violence in the streets of Southern California. Moreover, the members of the group functioned as hardened warriors who weren’t taking shit from anyone.

A few years later, N.W.A released the 100 Miles & Runnin’ EP (1990). Though they were without Ice Cube this time out (more on that later), they still made everyone take notice again. The EP’s title track chronicled a Warriors-esque escape through the streets of Los Angeles, while “Sa Prize Pt. 2” was a sequel to the infamous “Fuck the Police.” The best track was “Real N****z,” which also appears on Efil4zaggin. They trumpet their status as innovators, attempt to silence their doubters, and lambast the slew of imitators that had followed in their wake. “Cheating and not beating, the crowd I kept seating,” MC Ren raps. “But weak motherfuckas biting off and they kept eating.”

The EP also featured a teaser “Kamershol” for Efil4zaggin, which would be released less than a year later. Efil4zaggin is still a hard album to pin down, as its impact is unquestionable, but its overall legacy is a bit more complicated. The members of the group are as brash and bold as ever, for better or worse. The album was immaculately constructed from a musical perspective, and features some of Dre’s best production of his career. I’ll even go so far as to say that it’s a better conceived and sequenced album than Straight Out of Compton.

Where the album occasionally falters is in its content. I’m no shrinking violet, nor am I prone to scolding artists over what they rap about on record. I will say that after 30 years, some of this album is a little difficult to listen to, especially in areas that concern the harsh treatment and abuse of women.

I’ll freely admit that I’ve paid tribute to many an album that features some questionable raps, often heralding them without hesitation. But I’ll add that few of those albums are as cartoonishly violent or as unironically mean-spirited as Efil4zaggin is at times. I’m also aware that we currently live in more enlightened times, and the type of lyrical content from our favorite albums from the ’90s gets re-evaluated, but some of the songs on Efil4zaggin made for uncomfortable listening even at the time of their release.

The impact of Ice Cube’s absence on Efil4zaggin is obvious. Cube had famously left the crew in late 1989 under less than ideal circumstances, mostly due to money struggles between himself and Jerry Heller, the group’s manager. To make matters worse, The D.O.C., the group’s affiliate who was coming off his amazing debut album No One Can Do It Better(1989) had been in a horrific car accident that cost him the use of his voice. He ended up writing many of Eazy’s and Dre’s verses on the project, and appears on a skit or two, but Efil4zaggin likely would have benefited from more of D.O.C.’s distinctive presence.

As a result of these developments, MC Ren carries a lot of the rapping weight on Efil4zaggin, and he’s up to the task. But to help make up for the lack of Ice Cube, there is a lot of Dr. Dre rapping. Dre’s voice hadn’t exactly been alien to N.W.A fans, as his solo track “Express Yourself” had been an extremely successful single for Straight Outta Compton. However, Dre didn’t exactly rap all that much on that initial release, mostly contributing ad-libs.

As a rapper, Dre does what he can across Efil4zaggin. He has a commanding voice, and he does a decent enough job at delivering the lyrics written for him by The D.O.C. That said, he doesn’t establish himself as a spectacular emcee, and his best contributions to the album are clearly through the production side.

Efil4zaggin also features a lot more Eazy-E, who’s also on Straight Outta Compton a lot less than you think. In the years following his solo debut Eazy-Duz-It(1988), Eazy’s flow improved, sounding a lot smoother and less stilted. He’s a lot more confident overall on Efil4zaggin, and if nothing else, brings much needed humor to the proceedings.

On the production side, Dre’s beats on Efil4zaggin are a clear step up from his early work. Dre has always maintained that it didn’t take him very long to create the beats for Straight Outta Compton. Efil4zaggin presumably took longer to craft, at least partially because of the use of live instrumentation. Apparently inspired by sample clearance issues while recording 100 Miles and Runnin’, the group employed more live musicians during the recording sessions, while integrating sampled material. The resulting production is darker and grimmer overall.

N.W.A continues to chronicle the harsh realities of living in the hostile environment of the streets of Los Angeles on Efil4zaggin. “Real N****z Don’t Die” is a chaotic opening salvo, seemingly influenced by the Bomb Squad’s wall of sound production style, as Dre and Yella hook up a track filled with church-like bells, guitars, scratches, and vocal samples from The Last Poets and Rare Earth. Throughout the song, all three emcees describe the steps that they’re prepared to take in order to ensure their survival when facing corrupt cops and a crooked system. “Because the times are so wrong, gotta stay so strong,” Ren raps. “N****s gotta keep it going on and on / And don’t let no paleface throw your ass in a snail race / Have your residence occupying a jail space.”

Dre creates more the Bomb Squad-esque bedlam on the foreboding “Approach to Danger,” mixing bits of Lalo Schifrin’s “Scorpio’s View” from the Dirty Harry soundtrack with disembodied wails and howls. He mixes the song verses as if they were coming from distorted radio speakers, adding to the song’s menace.

These tracks stand in contrast to the production on “Appetite For Destruction,” the album’s second single. Here Dre uses a far more minimalist approach, laying down sprinklings of keys and a muffled bassline. The song is the best pure “gangsta” track on the album, as all three rappers deliver verbal mayhem. Dre sounds particularly spry on the track, giving his most verbally impressive performance on the album.

“Appetite” was apparently inspired by the Guns N’ Roses album of the same name. According to Ren, N.W.A had gone to a concert by the hard rock group at the Great Western Forum, and apparently Axl Rose was a fan. Yella maintains there were some negotiations for N.W.A to open for Guns N’ Roses on a subsequent tour, but the deal went sour due to financial conflicts.

“Alwayz Into Somethin’,” Efil4zaggin’s first single, is one of the best creations of Dre’s career: a smooth, laid-back track that’s perfect to ride to during late nights. The song was ground-breaking, as it’s often cited as Dre’s first “g-funk” beat. You can certainly hear the Doctor tinkering with the sounds that would make him an icon on “Alwayz,” as he mixes a meandering guitar groove with the horns from Bob James’ “Storm King” and piercing synthesizers. Ren and Dre trade verses throughout the track, with Ren coming the strongest. With cool authority, he delivers lines like, “You’re taking a chance when you think that / Talking under your breath won’t lead to young death / Fucking up shit ain’t shit but a killing / For a n***a labelled as being a motherfucking villain.”

Another area where Dre and Yella excel in terms of production were the album’s skits. In egotrip’s Book of Rap Lists, no less than “skit king” Prince Paul credits Efil4zaggin’s interlude as one of his favorite skits of all time. In terms of content, they tend to run pretty juvenile: N.W.A opens fire on a group of protesters in one, while another features a group of winos singing about the dangers about driving while intoxicated. However, in terms of production value, they’re pretty spectacular, as Dre and Yella recreate the sound of indoor and outdoor voices, and add the right amount of ambient noise to make it sound realistic.

The album’s best-remembered skit, “A Message to B.A.,” is an extended dis to Ice Cube (“B.A.” = “Benedict Arnold”). Cube’s departure from the group had turned acrimonious, involving verbal jabs and a couple of physical confrontations afterwards. N.W.A had included digs at Cube for leaving the group on the aforementioned “100 Miles and Runnin’” and “Real N****z,” but “Message…” is the most venomous. The interlude is a couple of minutes straight of phone messages from fans disparaging Cube’s character, ending with Ren threatening to “cut your hair off and fuck you with a broomstick.” Cube, of course, ended up getting the last laugh, releasing “No Vaseline” a.k.a. The Best Dis Song of All Time later in the year, with the arrival of his second solo album Death Certificate.

There are times when the production really does the heavy lifting on the album. The lyrics on “One Less Bitch” are about as questionable as anything released during the early 1990s, with Ren and Dre describing the blood-soaked revenge they enact on women who betray them. The track’s saving grace is the beat, which is as hard as a fucking brick, combining the piano from Barry White’s “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby” with the intro horn from Tom Browne’s “Funkin’ For Jamaica.”

Ren’s solo cut, “She Swallowed It,” the sequel to “Just Don’t Bite It” from 100 Miles & Runnin’,” is similarly problematic. While the first installment, an instructional ode to women performing fellatio, was off-color in a somewhat charming way, “She Swallowed It” is mean-spirited, “highlighted” by the seemingly un-ironic suggestion to punch a woman in her face if she doesn’t want to perform oral sex.

Both of the Eazy-E-centric cuts also cover aggressively sexual subject matter, but are more successful than most of the earlier offerings. The key difference is the humor intrinsic to Eazy’s persona that shines through. Eazy channels Blowfly, recording a couple of Parliament-Funkadelic parody songs. Since George Clinton’s crew didn’t take themselves particularly seriously, it’s not like the group is committing musical blasphemy here.

The first of the two tracks is “Automobile,” which is N.W.A’s take on the early Parliament track “My Automobile.” Here, Eazy, and occasionally Dre, switch lyrics like “You don't have to walk home, my dear” for “You don’t have to front on me, bitch!” while “All that I want is a teeny-weeny hug” becomes “All that I want is a little head!” Even with the clean lyrics, Parliament’s version is pretty cringey on its own, so Eazy and Dre cackling and braying their way through their own take is a bit of an improvement.

“I’d Rather Fuck You” offers genuine fun, as Eazy offers up his own raunchy version of Bootsy Collins’ “I’d Rather Be With You.” As Eazy says in the opening ad-libs, it’s a great song to kick back and smoke a joint to, as it retains all of the soul of the original version. Besides, it’s hard to get offended at Eazy when he croons, “I better hurry up and get this nut, ’cause it’s check-out time.”

The group saves their best effort for last, ending things with the introspective “The Dayz of Wayback,” which ends the album. The song features my favorite beat on the album, with Dre flipping a sample of Ohio Players’ “Players Balling” into something mournful, as Ren and Dre reflect on how the past has shaped their lives. Ren fashions his verse as an origin story of sorts. He explains how the pursuit of money and women led him down the path of becoming a “gangsta,” until he reached a point where crime consumed his life. Meanwhile, Dre laments Compton’s shifting landscape, how it shaped the trajectory of his life. “Yo, Compton was like still water – just strictly calm,” he ponders. “Now it's like motherfucking Vietnam.”

Efil4zaggin was N.W.A’s final album. The group broke up at their peak, which, as Yella pointed out in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, doesn’t happen very often. Just months after its release, Dre left the fold, stating he wasn’t getting adequately paid for his production work. He, of course, ascended to superstardom a year-and-a-half later with The Chronic (1992). Ren began recording solo endeavors with Eazy’s Ruthless imprint. Yella produced a little on his own, developing groups like Yomo & Maulkie, but also becoming an in-house producer of sorts for Ruthless. Eazy took Dre’s departure about as well as he took Ice Cube’s, and released many songs targeting his former producer. Members of the group have said that they all made amends with each other prior to Eazy’s death in 1995.

N.W.A rose fast, shined bright, and burnt out. Perhaps it’s best that Efil4zaggin was the group’s final offering. As D.O.C. explained in the Rolling Stone article, the lack of Ice Cube cost the album. “’N.W.A was the realization of the streets becoming conscious of the shit it was drowning in, and Cube was its Chuck D,” he said in the interview. ”When Cube left, it just turned into n***a shit. It was back to, ‘What can we say that could shock people or make people angry?’ All the soul was gone. The reasoning of why you were saying ‘n***a’ and all these things that could be considered vile was gone. The reason why you were angry or upset was gone.”

That said, Efil4zaggin’s fast and immediate success helped remind labels that there was a lot of money to be made in hip-hop. Not that many hip-hop albums hit #1 on Billboard in the next year or two (it was hard to dislodge artists like Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks, and Billy Ray Cyrus from the top spot during that era), but hip-hop albums, especially those from N.W.A’s lineage continued to do well on the charts and in record stores.

Efil4zaggin stands as a very dope, albeit flawed, piece of work. Its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Some of it may be difficult to listen to three decades later, but the majority still holds up as rugged street hip-hop.