Required Listening: N.W.A.

This is a very rough history of N.W.A. told with vids and images.

First, Dr Dre was in a group called World Class Wreckin' Cru, recording super sessual 1980s Electro-hop R&B jammers like "Turn off the Lights:"


At that time, he looked like this:

Then Eazy E swooped in on Dre and Ice Cube who were buddies and both performing at a club called Eve's After Dark on a regular basis, and N.W.A. was formed (other members included DJ Yella, Arabian Prince and MC Ren).

It all started with this...

"Straight Outta Compton" recorded by N.W.A. in 1990. Then, Eazy E gave $2,500 to the Republican Party and had lunch with George H. W. Bush. – but that's just an aside. He was a cutthroat businessman who saw hip hop as the best new way to make a buck, and make a buck he did, despite rapidly losing his cred because of his shady business tactics and inflammatory statements to press.

Then Ice Cube said, Eff this I'm out (he wrote about half the lyrics on platinum-selling "Straight Outta Compton" and got well under $100k of the $650 it grossed), and recorded the incredibly awesome/harsh diss track, "No Vaseline."




Next up Dre ditched N.W.A. for Suge Knight and Death Row after similar issues with Eazy E, and recorded this:


"Dre Day." Oh hey Snoop! This song is another epic Eazy diss but also PLEASE WATCH the video at minute 3:38 and look closely at the 9 year old white girl dancing in the background. Umm.

Eazy came back at Dre with "Real Muthaphuckkin Gs" (censored version: "Real Compton City Gs"):

You can't really be mad at Eazy for using pics of Dre from his WCWC days in this video...

N.W.A. was dissolved completely. Eazy then signed a Jewish rap duo called Blood of Abraham, and started doing a whole lotta good with the money he'd made, taking kids from Compton on trips to Disney Land, sponsoring community events and giving kids money for college. Outside of the public eye, he became a local hero.

Here are some amazing pictures of Eazy E / N.W.A.

Read Jeff Chang's incredible piece on Eazy E's story here.

EK Day 2000 @toomanyronis