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It's now considered the greatest protest song in rap history. The song in question was, of course, “Fuck tha Police,” which pre-dated Rodney King, Michael Brown and the entire #blacklivesmatter debate. Straight Outta Compton “is well-known for an obscene anti-police number,” the Times wrote glibly in 1992. The media often were dismissive of N.W.A during their time. People where we come from hear so many lies that the truth stands out like a sore thumb.” “We're telling the real story of what it's like living in places like Compton,” Eazy told the Los Angeles Times in 1989.

#Gangsta rap made me do it lyrics easy e crack

Dre, according to N.W.A manager Jerry Heller's memoir, Ruthless.Įazy wanted to express what was really happening on the streets of late-'80s Los Angeles, then in the throes of the crack epidemic, gang violence and police chief Daryl Gates' assault on its poorest citizens. “All we're doing, we're plugging into Eric's life,” said Dr. “Seventy-five percent of the lyrics and content you hear in N.W.A was going on in Compton and was lived by my father,” says Eazy's firstborn son, a rapper himself who goes by the name Lil Eazy-E. But their inspiration, by all accounts, was Eazy's life and times. More importantly, he had the gangsta vision that ultimately took over hip-hop and remains its driving force today.Įazy handpicked once-in-a-lifetime talents Dre and Cube for N.W.A, and they would reap much of the glory for their production and lyrics, respectively. Dre often did that for him.īut Eazy's high-pitched voice - alternately hilarious and terrifying - stands up well on record. And he usually didn't write his own verses. “I ain't never see nobody take that many takes,” Ren says. He famously took forever to record “Boyz-n-the-Hood” because of his poor flow. To be clear, Eazy was far from a technically great rapper. In fact, he deserves to be on the mountain. With Tupac and Biggie's faces chiseled onto rap's Mount Rushmore and the likes of Jay-Z, Nas, André 3000 and Eminem duking it out for the other spots, Eazy's not even in the conversation.īut he should be. Even with the N.W.A biopic on the horizon, he's remembered by some as a footnote, rather than a hip-hop colossus who changed everything. Even Tupac and Biggie owe Eazy a debt their labels, Death Row and Bad Boy, followed in Ruthless' wake.īut today, 20 years after his death, Eazy isn't venerated the way many of those artists are. Dre's solo success, and Dre begat Eminem, 50 Cent, The Game and, to some extent, Kendrick Lamar. “He came up with ideas for things that later happened.” N.W.A's success begat Ice Cube and Dr.

“He was a visionary,” says Phyllis Pollack, who later became Eazy's publicist. It was just the idea that he had a record.” “He didn't have no offices or no shit like that. “He was the only person I knew who had his own record on his own label,” Ren says. His first single, “Boyz-n-the-Hood,” caught fire in the streets, helping build his fledgling imprint, Ruthless Records. But Wright grew apprehensive about the lifestyle and sought to parlay his earnings into a rap business. Ren grew up in Compton two blocks from the diminutive, quiet Eric Wright, who made his name in the neighborhood selling crack. “I didn't know he rapped,” remembers MC Ren, his future bandmate in N.W.A. What Does It Mean?” But there was no gangsta-rap label, and certainly no gangsta-rap genre.Įazy-E was an unlikely progenitor. by way of Ice-T's “6 'n the Mornin',” which was patterned after Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D's “P.S.K.

For Eazy-E, the concept of gangsta rap was fully formed in his mind.īy 1986, the genre, which nobody then called “gangsta rap” (“reality rap,” please) had begun to sprout in L.A.