Garnering $60 million in its opening weekend and nearly $120 million to date, Straight Outta Compton clearly resonated with people curious about N.W.A: the week after its release, there were 24 times as many Google searches for N.W.A as a month prior, and adds of the N.W.A Pandora station increased by 702 percent. For these new fans, though, which movie portrayals—or lack thereof—piqued interest? When curious minds left theaters and turned their phones back on, who did they search for?
Among the three focal characters of the movie, Eazy-E, whose death from AIDS in 1995 plays centrally in the film, got the biggest spike, with 51 times as many searches as usual on Google. Ice Cube came in with a comparatively modest 20x, while Dr. Dre’s searches spiked 27x a week before, when he released his surprise album, Compton: A Soundtrack. Meanwhile, the controversy around Dre’s past abusive behavior toward women caused a huge spike—145 times as many searches as in July 2015—for journalist Dee Barnes.
The real search winners, it seems, are the members of N.W.A who weren’t heavily featured in the movie: Searches spiked 70x for DJ Yella and 61x for MC Ren. There’s even some consolation for Arabian Prince, who didn’t make it into Straight Outta Compton at all, still but topped Ice Cube’s searches with 24x.
Where are all these new fans of golden-era hip hop coming from? Oddly enough, the Shire: there’s an enormous spike in interest from cities in Australia and New Zealand. If we're going to keep things Stateside, though, these are the most dramatic increases in U.S. cities for each member of N.W.A, according to Google data:
Eazy-E: Ontario, CA
Ice Cube: Paradise, NV
Dr. Dre: Ontario, CA
MC Ren: Meridian, ID (yeah, we have no idea either)
DJ Yella: Glendora, CA
Arabian Prince: Indianapolis, IN
