"Straight Outta Compton" box office numbers have climbed to $60.2 million, according to Variety on Monday. The film chronicles the California-based hip-hop quintet N.W.A.'s rise to fame and subsequent disbandment. It reveals the early years of renowned hip-hop artists Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, DJ Yella and MC Ren to the world.

Ice Cube spoke with XXL magazine on Monday about the movie and whether or not N.W.A. could find mainstream success in 2015.

N.W.A.'s music got their message across to the world about life as they knew it. Many say their rap lyrics were a political tool, but Ice Cube said that wasn't their intention. It came about as the artists were figuring out their styles.

"Well, initially we were just trying to figure out our style that the world would accept, 'What should we be talking about on our records?' We decided to talk about anything that we knew about," he explained.

"We did a song like 'F*ck The Police,' and we started to get so much heat from outside forces, like police departments all over, the FBI and there were all kinds of Parents Against Music Groups coming after us."

He said that despite the backlash, they couldn't deny it was happening.

"We just stood up, and that's what really spun us into having this political angle where we understood that they made it political, not us," he said.

Cube said some artists were more political than others. Many rappers focused on the partying. Some boasted about themselves.

"My favorite artists were Melly Mel, Ice-T, Run-DMC, KRS-One, Chuck D. Those were my favorite rappers, so of course my style was going to lean towards political, because that was their style. Not on every record, but their overall message was to have self-awareness," he said.

Ice Cube believes today's rappers can have political influence on an even larger scale thanks to the Internet.

"You can do whatever record you want to do and put it out now even faster than we could," he said. "The Internet is wide open for anybody to do any kind of music that they want to. I think it's more open than when we were doing it."

When asked if he felt the system had changed so that artists like N.W.A. and Tupac Shakur couldn't exist now, Ice Cube responded, "We could exist, but I don't know if we could reach the tip top, like we did. It was so new, music going in that direction. So we set the standard. We set the bar."