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In 1988, with the double-platinum album
Straight Outta Compton,
N.W.A brought gangsta rap into the mainstream. The record was among the
first to offer an insider's perspective of the violence and brutality
of gang-ridden South Central L.A. With songs like "Fuck tha Police" and
"Gangsta Gangsta" set in a chaotic swirl of siren and gunshot sounds, it
also foreshadowed the 1992 L.A. riots.
In 1986, O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson, born and raised in a two-parent,
middle-class home in South Central—and always more interested in music
and books than in gangs—met Andre "Dr. Dre" Young, who shared Cube's
passion for writing rap songs. The two started writing for Eric "Eazy-E"
Wright, a former drug dealer who started Ruthless Records with his
profits. Eazy needed material for a group he'd signed to the label, HBO.
When HBO rejected Cube and Dre's song "Boyz-n-the-Hood," about the
South Central town of Compton, Eazy-E decided to record the song himself
and the three started working together as Niggaz With Attitude (N.W.A).
After N.W.A's first collection,
N.W.A. and the Posse, Cube
took a year off to study drafting at the Phoenix Institute of
Technology. When he returned in 1988, the group—now with MC Ren and DJ
Yella on board—finished Eazy's solo album and started work on
Straight Outta Compton.
Released in 1989, the album sold 750,000 copies even before N.W.A
embarked on a tour. In the meantime, a media storm developed over the
controversial "Fuck tha Police," resulting in a "warning letter" from
the FBI to the group's distributor, Priority Records.
After a tour, Cube got into a financial dispute with N.W.A's manager,
Jerry Heller, who Cube claimed had cheated him out of royalties. The
two settled out of court in 1990, and Cube moved on to a successful solo
career. N.W.A continued recording and selling records but fell out of
critical favor. In June 1991, the group made history again when, despite
strong criticism from politicians and being banned from some retail
chains,
EFIL4ZAGGIN("Niggaz 4 Life" backward) reached Number One two weeks after its release.
Members of N.W.A made the police blotter often during the early
1990s, mainly for assault charges that ended up being dismissed or
settled. Dr. Dre was involved in the most notorious case when he was
charged with attacking the female host of a television rap show in 1991.
He pleaded no contest and paid an out-of-court settlement to the host.
In 1992, Dre was arrested for assaulting record producer Damon Thomas
and later plead guilty to assault on a police officer, eventually
serving "house arrest" and wearing a police-monitoring ankle bracelet.
Eazy-E also raised eyebrows in the rap community when he attended a
fund-raising lunch for President George Bush, donating $2,500 for the
privilege.
By early 1992 N.W.A was over, its members scattered to solo careers.
Dre left both the group and Ruthless to co-found Death Row Records with
Marion "Suge" Knight. Eazy-E later claimed in a lawsuit that Knight had
negotiated Dre's exit with the help of baseball bats and pipes. MC Ren's
Kizz My Black Azz EP (Number 12, 1992) went platinum. But aside from Ice Cube, Dr. Dre has had the most chart success: In 1993
The Chronic
(Number Three) went triple platinum, appeared on a number of critics'
year-end top-10 lists, and spawned several hits. "Nuthin' But a 'G'
Thang" (Number Two pop, Number One R&B) and "Dre Day" (Number Eight
pop, Number Six R&B) featured the rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, who later
in the year had his own hit album (produced by Dre),
DoggyStyle
(Number One pop, Number One R&B). As a sign of lingering bad
feelings, Dre also used his solo album and accompanying videos to
ridicule Eazy. In October 1993 Eazy responded with
It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa
(Number Five pop, Number One R&B). Eazy also found success with
Ruthless nurturing the trio Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, with whom Eazy
recorded the single "Foe tha Love of $" (Number 41 pop, Number 33
R&B, 1995).
Two years later, Eazy-E split with longtime manager Jerry Heller.
Communication among the former N.W.A members quickly improved. Soon Dr.
Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and the others were talking about an N.W.A
reunion project. Though he had been the first to leave the group for a
very successful solo career, Ice Cube later expressed regret that N.W.A
had never built on its early potential. Then, in 1995, Eazy-E died from
complications of AIDS. Both Dre and Cube visited him in the hospital
shortly before he died. The Ruthless impresario was married two days
before his death, and his estate quickly became mired in a barrage of
lawsuits filed on behalf of business associates and heirs (which
included nine children by seven different women). A final solo album,
Str8 Off tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton (Number Three pop, Number One R&B), was released in 1996.
At Death Row, Dre enjoyed continued popular success, both as house
producer and as a performer in a duet with Tupac Shakur on "California
Love" (Number Six pop, 1996). But Dre unexpectedly left Death Row that
same year and soon formed Aftermath Entertainment (in association with
Interscope). By now an outspoken critic of the highly publicized West
Coast–East Coast hip-hop feud, Dre's first post-Death Row single was
"Been There, Done That." Dre also discovered a white Detroit rapper
named Eminem, whose Dre-produced albums made him as controversial as
N.W.A had been a decade before. As Dre prepared to release his followup
to
The Chronic, he filed suit against Death Row for copyright infringement over the label's unauthorized release of
Suge Knight Presents: Chronic 2000, a compilation album that Dre felt unfairly "used" his "Chronic" title. (He later dropped the suit.) Dre's own
2001 (Number Two pop, Number One R&B, 1999) featured such guests as MC Ren, Snoop Dogg, and Eminem.
The long-rumored N.W.A reunion finally began to take shape that same
year. Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and MC Ren recorded "Hell Low," the opening
track on Cube's
War & Peace vol. 2 (The Peace Disc), and a new track credited to N.W.A also appeared on the soundtrack to Cube's film
Next Friday.
That was followed by a national arena tour in 2000 with Dre, Ren, Snoop
Dogg, Warren G., and Eminem. Separately and in joint interviews, the
former N.W.A partners talked up a proposed album called
Not These Niggas Again, but by 2001 any further studio recordings were not, in Dre's opinion, strong enough to release.
Portions of this biography appeared in The Rolling Stone
Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001). Evan
Serpick contributed to this article.
