We had a very professional relationship and it wasn’t until years later that I found out the impact of the album cover. They had their friends there and some of the set ups, they were quite involved, but I didn’t get too close to them. To me, they weren’t like their music in person at all. I was totally unaware of who NWA were, but they were nice guys. Prior to ‘Straight Outta Compton’, I shot the cover to Eazy-E’s ‘Eazy Does It’, but I didn’t know much about rap and this is the only music photography that I’ve done in my entire career. We were just creating on the fly, not knowing where it was going to go. We were all basically at the same level – just starting out. At the time he was at Capitol Records but was doing some freelance work on the side and got the opportunity to work with NWA. “I had just graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and a friend of mine, Kevin Hosmann, was an art director. We caught up with Poppleton to find out how the famous picture came to be, and whether or not Eazy’s gun was really loaded. Just out of college, Poppleton scored a freelance gig shooting NWA, and his work would appear on the cover of a number of their releases, none more notable than ‘Straight Outta Compton’. But the Angelino’s place in music history is assured thanks to the one and only group to pose in front of his lens. Featuring all six members of the “the world’s most dangerous group” as towering figures, with scowls etched across their faces as leader Eazy-E points a pistol directly at the camera, it summarised an angry, rebellious record the rang loudly through South Central Los Angeles’ African-American communities, bottling a disenchantment that would boil over a few years later with the LA Riots.įor almost three decades, photographer Eric Poppleton has enjoyed a successful career working for clients in advertising, architecture and television. The cover to NWA’s ‘Straight Outta Compton’ helped set the tone for the most important, blistering and downright essential gangster rap album of all time.
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