Straight Outta Compton

Kids are flamed 😰

NWA ended, suitably, amid further violence and controversy. Dre, belatedly agreeing with Cube that he should have been paid more, enlisted the help of former footballer-turned-burgeoning record mogul, Marion “Suge” Knight, to extricate himself from his Ruthless contract. According to Heller’s autobiography, Ruthless: A Memoir, Dre called Eazy to a meeting but when Eazy showed up, Dre was nowhere to be found. Instead, Knight pointed to a van parked nearby and said Heller was in the back of it being tortured, suggesting Eazy’s mum would be next. Eazy signed the release papers, and Heller had to talk him out of killing Knight.

The end of the group was by no means the end of NWA’s influence. Eazy and Heller continued to make millions as Ruthless hit paydirt again with the Cleveland group, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, whose combination of sung hooks and hyperspeed rapping anticipated elements of today’s hip-hop sound. Dre and Cube embarked on the solo music and film careers they remain involved with today. An NWA reunion had been discussed, but plans were barely starting to coalesce by the time Eazy died from Aids-related illness in 1995.

The ripples, though, continued to spread. The Game, a native of the same South Central LA streets NWA rapped about, was inspired enough to get a portrait of Eazy-E tattooed on his right forearm and the NWA logo tattooed on his chest. He managed to realise his dream when his debut LP ‘The Documentary’ was executive-produced by Dre.

“NWA, for Compton, was just big,” he said in a 2006 interview. “That’s our claim to fame right there. We own the right to rep NWA, man – that’s pretty much our shit. People from all round the world love NWA, but who has more right to rep NWA than somebody from Compton? Especially a kid who was around when those things were going on. I seen Eazy in passin’ around Compton. Some days he’d be givin’ out turkey. Any chance I had, I’d get my uncle or my moms to take me to see when he was doin’ video shoots or little concerts, and I met him once. As a kid, NWA was just my life.