When John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood hit theaters in the summer of 1992, there was a huge amount of controversy surrounding the movie, which today can be streamed with a Netflix subscription. Looking back, it's clear there was some inherent racism in the moment, but there was actually some real violence that occurred at a handful of showings. The news took that and ran with it, ratcheting up the rhetoric around the dangers of rap music, especially gangsta rap, which was already scaring the shit out of suburban America.
For me, a 16-year-old suburban kid, that was all I needed to hear to want to see the movie badly. What I expected, and what the movie is, are two totally different things.
