Straight Outta Compton

N.W.A without Ice Cube

Royalties, which typically take months to work their way from shops to distributors to record labels and on to artists, weren't arriving fast enough to keep tempers from boiling over. At a gig in Phoenix, Arizona, each member was given a cheque, but only if they signed a contract.

"I refused to take my cheque, because I felt that I would be admitting that I agreed with what I was bein' paid," Cube told me in 2006. "They [the other group members] thought I was crazy! I heard comments like, 'For $75,000, I don't care what that contract say. I would sign that shit two times'. They were like, 'What's wrong with you? This is more money than we've ever seen, and you wanna be the dark cloud in the shit?'"

The picture was complicated by 'Eazy-Duz-It', released within weeks of 'Straight Outta Compton'. Though nominally an Eazy-E solo album, the record was pretty much another NWA LP. "The cheque was just for 'Straight Outta Compton', but we'd worked on both records equally," Cube said. "I felt like we deserved more of both pies. We put as much time and effort into 'Eazy-Duz-It' as into 'Straight Outta Compton' - all of us. But Eazy wanted to keep all the 'Eazy-Duz-It' money and just pay us the NWA money, and take his share out of the NWA money! I'm like, man! Come on, dude - you're double-dippin' here!"

The legend of the $75,000 cheque has passed in to NWA lore, and Cube's refusal to accept it from Heller is shown in the film. Less well known is Heller's view on why the sum was correct, and why Cube's decision to leave the band was unnecessary.