If you want to understand the importance of "Straight Outta Compton", try to imagine a world without it. There’s an alternate '88 where it bombs, and Ice Cube returns to architectural drafting school in Northern Arizona. Eazy E goes back to selling crack and dodging the battering ram. Dr. Dre rides out his run with the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, sells swap meet mixtapes for spare cash, and never finds the right rappers to implement his vision.

Maybe gangsta rap never usurps L.A. electro-funk. Raiders jackets and quicksilver suits co-exist peacefully. Tipper Gore never becomes a shook one. Maybe Inglewood or Watts become alternate Meccas of West Coast rap. Compton never becomes hip-hop’s Hub City and never yields DJ Quik, MC Eiht, The Game, Kendrick Lamar, or YG. Extend this gruesome scenario further and Friday never gets made, Snoop Dogg never expands the English lexicon, and medical marijuana never gets green-lit.

How powerful is this song? Even its parody, "Straight Outta Locash", is better than 92% of all rap records ever made. It’s both socio-political polemic and AK-47 shoved in the gullet of Ronald Reagan, Daryl Gates, the CIA, FBI, and concerned parents. Police sirens signal the chase, but Eazy, Cube, Dre, and Ren are anti-heroes too heavily armed, aggressive, and sly to get caught. They’re laughing all the way to rob the bank.

If militarized tanks crushed the doors of Compton homes, this was the nuclear response: Led by four nihilistic villains who would smother your mother and make your sister think they loved her. In Cold Blood in Compton. If the N.W.A film exaggerates them as Marvel Comic titans, that’s just how this song made them seem. It wasn’t the first gangsta rap salvo, but it might be the one that matters most. Insurrection in its most sawed off form.

—Jeff Weiss