Compton, California 1986
While 22-year old Eric Wright makes a good living selling drugs,
he is rattled after his cousin is shot and killed. Wright decides he needs to make a career change,
in an industry that is…a bit safer, you could say. That industry? The music industry, of course.
Wright decides to become a rapper, and begins recording songs in his parents’ garage.
He got more involved with the quickly growing Los Angeles hip-hop scene. On March 3, 1987,
Wright met Jerry Heller, who by this time had already made a name
for himself managing local rappers. The two apparently got along pretty well and
decided to start a record label together called Ruthless Records. Both would invest
hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money into the business. Wright had the money
to spend. He apparently had earned at least $250,000 over the years from dealing drugs.
One of the first people Wright wanted to work with for his new label was a dude named Andre Young,
a local DJ known to his fans as Dr. Dre. Young had already found success in the recording industry
with the hip-hop group World Class Wreckin’ Cru, and he also regularly performed mixes for a local
radio station. Through the help of a record store owner named Steve Yano, Wright was able
to meet Young and convince him to start recording with him for Ruthless Records. Wright would rap,
Young would produce. However, Wright knew that the more talent he could find, the better his
songs would be. He reached out to another DJ named Kim Renard Nazel to help out as well.
In late 1986, Wright met a young, up and coming rapper named O’Shea Jackson. Jackson was just 16,
but had already been performing with the hip-hop group C.I.A.. Young knew Jackson
already because his cousin was also in C.I.A. By 1987, Jackson, who performed publicly as
Ice Cube, was writing songs for Wright, who had chosen his own stage name by this point: Eazy-E.
Young and Jackson soon became a dynamic songwriting team. They
wrote one particular banger for H.B.O., or Home Boys Only, a New York-based group
Wright had signed to Ruthless Records. The song they wrote? “Boyz-n-the Hood.” However, H.B.O.,
the hip-hop group, not the TV network, rejected the song. So Wright was like, “fine, we’ll form
our own group and release it ourselves.” Wright called the group N.W.A., which stood for….well
I’m a white dude from Kansas so I’ll just let you read it. N.W.A. would feature not only Easy-E,
Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube, but additionally Nazel, who went by the stage name Arabian Prince.
Ruthless Records released “Boyz-n-the Hood” on March 3, 1987, and it was soon a local hit. It
became a sort of anthem for many African American young men who grew up in the slums of Los Angeles,
many of them without solid father figures in their lives. The song unsurprisingly
resonated with them as they regularly dealt with gang violence, rampant drug use,
and police brutality. Later that year, Ruthless Records included the song on a compilation album
called N.W.A. and the Posse. The compilation, which was entirely produced by Dr. Dre,
featured three official N.W.A. tracks: “8 Ball,” “Panic Zone,” and “Dope Man.” While this album
today is often labeled “West Coast hip-hop,” it also signaled a BRAND NEW genre of music
that we call today “gangsta rap.” Outside of L.A., eh…the compilation didn’t really do that well.
By early 1988, N.W.A. had two additional members: DJ, rapper and producer Antoine Carraby,
whose stage name was DJ Yella, and rapper Lorenzo Patterson, whose stage name was MC Ren. Meanwhile,
the group had been writing and recording a lot of new material. They were inspired to make one song
based on one specific experience they had while hanging out in front of the studio they recorded
at, Audio Achievements in Torrance. It was later dramatized in a movie, actually. Police officers
approached them and demanded they get on their knees and show IDs, without any explanation.
Angered by this experience, Ice Cube wrote the lyrics for a song that would become their song
“Fuck tha Police.” Dr. Dre was a little nervous about producing that one, as he had served time
recently in jail over numerous traffic violations. Regardless, they all ended up following through
making it, and that wasn’t the only provocative new song they recorded. Oh no. They also recorded
a song called “Straight Outta Compton,” which featured obscene, angry, threatening lyrics that
celebrated violence and just basically talked trash the whole time. They recorded a song called
“Gangsta Gangsta,” which bragged about doing a drive by shooting and dehumanizing women.
You’ve got to understand. This was 1988. You just didn’t see lyrics like this back
then. It was shocking, to say the least, and that was kind of the point. MC Ren and
fellow Ruthless Records rapper The D.O.C. also helped out with lyrics, and Dr. Dre, DJ Yella,
and Arabian Prince all pitched in producing, using a drum machine, sampled horn blasts,
funk guitar riffs, turntable scratches, and sampled vocals from old songs. I should point
out that Arabian Prince had left the group before recording was complete. Dr. Dre not only produced,
but rapped on several tracks. For less than $12,000 the group finished recording what
would become their debut studio album, Straight Outta Compton, named after the aforementioned song
that was the title track. Ruthless released it on August 8, 1988, and most of the songs
not only documented Compton’s street violence, but seemed to encourage it.
Straight Outta Compton horrified grandmas across the country. “Fuck tha Police”
even got the attention of the FBI, who sent a letter to N.W.A. warning them that
they disapproved of the song’s promotion of violence toward law enforcement. Afterward,
N.W.A. jokingly referred to themselves as “the world’s most dangerous group”
when promoting themselves. Many stores found Straight Outta Compton too offensive to sell,
and when it was in stores, it was one of those rare albums with the new Parental Advisory
label on it. As you might expect, Straight Outta Compton got hardly any radio airplay,
as most stations were nervous to play it. In fact, some stations even BANNED the group
from ever getting played. MTV also refused to air N.W.A.’s music video for “Straight Outta Compton,”
also afraid it glorified violence too much. Despite being extremely controversial
and offensive to so many people, or perhaps BECAUSE of that, Straight Outta Compton was
a hit. It was the first big gangsta rap album…specifically the first gangsta rap
album to sell more than a million copies. It went on to sell almost more than three million copies.
Critics also generally praised it, mostly since it was just exciting and groundbreaking stuff.
In 1989, N.W.A. went on a national tour. Because of “Fuck tha Police,” local police
officers often refused to provide security at the group’s concerts.
At one infamous show in Detroit, members of the group were detained
by local police because they decided to perform just a few lines of the song.
Meanwhile, Eazy-E had also released his debut solo album, Eazy-Duz-It. Ice Cube wrote most
of the album. However, friction between Ice Cube and Eazy-E and Jerry Heller related to how
Ice Cube was getting paid for his contributions ultimately led to
Ice Cube leaving N.W.A. to pursue a solo career in December 1989. Ice Cube later
sued Heller for unpaid royalties, but they ended up settling that out of court.
The drama caused by Ice Cube demanding more money led to many diss tracks back and forth
between him and the remaining members of N.W.A., who released some of those diss tracks on their EP
100 Miles and Runnin’, released by Ruthless on August 14, 1990. The music video for the
EP’s title track shows the remaining members of N.W.A. in a jail cell and an
Ice Cube look-alike being released. Ice Cube responded to these diss tracks with the song
“No Vaseline,” featured on his album Death Certificate, a song that not only targeted
his old group but featured a seemingly antisemtic attack on Heller, who was Jewish.
For the rest of 1990 and into 1991, N.W.A. recorded what would become their second
AND final studio album, called, yes…that. (Niggaz4Life) Well it’s also known as Efil4zaggin,
so I’ll call it that. Ruthless released it on May 28, 1991, and this one was arguably even more
provocative than Straight Outta Compton, getting another Parental Advisory sticker, of course.
Efil4zaggin had less original lyrics, and somewhat signaled that N.W.A. had become a parody of
themselves. The lyrics were also heavier on the misogyny, and this really turned off a lot of fans
and critics. Still, Efil4zaggin demonstrated how far both Dr. Dre and DJ Yella had come
as producers- by most accounts, this album just sounded BETTER. Featuring the singles “Alwayz
into Somethin,” “Appetite for Destruction,” and “The Dayz of Wayback,” Efil4zaggin sold
almost a million copies its first week out and got to the top of the Billboard 200 chart.
A few months later, N.W.A. released a video called…that (Niggaz4Life:
The Only Home Video)...a behind the scenes look at making Efil4zaggin. However, by that time,
N.W.A. was no more. They had broken up. The main cause was Dr. Dre’s decision
to leave the group to help start the record label Death Row Records, but the remaining group’s
members, MC Ren and DJ Yella, had also begun to lose trust in Eazy-E’s true financial motives.
Dr. Dre, just like Ice Cube, went on to have a ridiculously successful solo career. Eazy-E
also went on to have a successful music career
mostly with other artists, but he tragically died from complications due to AIDS on March 26, 1995.
He was only 30 years old. Though Eazy had been in feuds with both
Cube and Dre since N.W.A. dissolved, before he died he had made amends with both.
In 2014, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre helped produce a movie based on the rise and fall of N.W.A.
called…you guessed it…Straight Outta Compton. That’s the movie I referenced earlier. Ice Cube’s
son, O’Shea Jackson, Jr., actually played the role of his dad in the film. Jerry Heller sued
the filmmakers, though, saying he was depicted inaccurately. He also
argued that parts of it were taken from his autobiography without his permission.
In 2016, N.W.A. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and four of the
surviving members, along with some of Eazy-E’s family, were there for the acceptance speech.
Today they are all still alive, and recognized as the godfathers of gangsta rap
music. Despite still being controversial due to their explicit lyrics and glorification of crime,
drugs, and misogyny, N.W.A. is arguably the most influential hip-hop group of all time.
They’ve sold more than 10 million records. They left a lasting legacy that continues to
this day. They brought not just gangsta rap, but ALL rap into the mainstream with their success,
including broadening the appeal of hip-hop beyond just an African American audience.
They rewrote the rules of rap. Before N.W.A., no hip-hop group sounded like them. After N.W.A.,
it seemed like every hip-hop group wanted to sound like them.
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So what’s your favorite N.W.A. song? My favorite is “Dopeman.” I know you didn’t care,
but I thought I’d tell you, anyway, Also, which rap group would you like to see me
cover for this series next? Let me know in those comments, and thank you for watching!