Cam is so blasé about crime that he even makes a joke about the possibility of being electrocuted

As the common image goes, when the police is seeking an outlaw, they put up signs with the picture of the criminal.
Eazy-E alludes to how African-American people are painted as savages by tyrannous racist cops.

O'Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson was born in June of 1969, which would put him at about 18 or 19 when writing this song

Compton had repressive anti-gang laws in the 1980s and ‘90s which regarded any group of three or more people with a common identity as a “gang,” allowing police to treat groups of kids hanging out after dark as criminal organizations. The police undertook “gang sweeps” to harrass and arrest such kids, leading to the sort of anti-police animosity that spawned this song. This is explained in the beginning text scroll of the full version of the video for “Straight Outta Compton.”

Ren would often call himself “the villain” of the group (probably because “villain” and “Ren” work as slant rhymes). He even called his 1996 solo album The Villain in Black.

Don’t think that having a police officer be black means that he or she will treat minorities better. Cube points out that these officers will still mistreat kids in order to show off to their bosses, or simply because that’s the nature of the job. Read here for a troubling investigation of this phenomenon.

Big was known for wearing expensive multi-colored sweaters by Coogi, an Australian brand first popularized by Bill Cosby in the ’80s.

Fellow New York rapper Jim Jones told MTV:

Back then, Coogi was like one of the finer things to buy. They were like 300, 400 a pop. If you got the special-edition ones, they was running you like 600, 700 — you know, the fruity colors.

According to a VIBE article, MTV originally asked Bad Boy to censor this line in the video because they mistook the word “Coogi” for “coochie,” slang for vagina.

“All you need is a dollar and a dream” is a slogan of the New York State lottery. Here’s a series of commercials from 1990 that use the slogan:

Big has plenty of money, so he doesn’t need the lotto—his dismissive tone suggests that he thinks playing the lottery is for suckers.

In 1994, “cream” was a trendy term for money, having been popularized by the Wu-Tang Clan the previous year on their hit “C.R.E.A.M,” which stands for “Cash Rules Everything Around Me.”

Big’s use of “cream” is notable because he was later accused of “biting” Wu-Tang’s style by Raekwon and Ghostface on the 1995 skit “Shark Niggas (Biters)”:

Niggas be killing me though, son, because you know
They be they be coming with your words and shit
They hear you say one word, then here they come with the word
Trying to flip it and bounce it and shit on some bullshit

Biggie used the term “cream” multiple other times on Ready To Die, including on “Respect” “Gimme The Loot,” and “Warning.” He continued using it on his second album, Life After Death.

Big asks the “true players” not to ruin the night by shooting someone in the party, because he’s trying to get laid.

Ironically, Puff Daddy is the voice in the background asking “why?” Later, in 1999, Puffy was involved in a club shooting in which Bad Boy rapper Shyne actually shoot up the place while defending Puff. Here’s Shyne’s perp walk: