Okay, let's just dive in. Welcome back to the
Deep Dive. Today, we are not just opening a history
book. We are, I think it's fair to say we are
handling unexploded ordnance. That's a very good
way to put it, a very fair warning. Yeah, we
are lighting the fuse on a topic that is just
explosive in every single sense of the word,
culturally, politically, musically. I want to
start with a quote that really, it set the tone
for me when I was prepping for this. Oh, okay.
It's from the music journalist Garrick D. Kennedy.
He described the subject of our deep dive today
as a sonic Molotov cocktail. Sonic Molotov cocktail.
Wow. That is a powerful image. Isn't it? Yeah.
It implies something, you know, homemade, volatile,
and just designed to burn things down. Exactly.
And according to Kennedy, this cocktail, it ignited
a firestorm when it was thrown through the window
of pop culture in the summer of 1988. We're talking
about one of the loudest big bangs in music history.
Yeah. We're talking about N .W .A. Niggas Wit
Attitudes. The world's most dangerous group.
A title they absolutely earned, quite literally.
It's just wild to think about. This is a group
from Compton, California, that was really only
active, I mean, as a full unit for a few short
years. Yeah. What was it? 87 to 91. Right. It's
a blink of an eye in music industry terms. But
in that tiny window, they managed to completely
rewrite the rulebook. And not just the musical
rulebook. I mean, they went after the cultural
rulebook, the political one, the business one.
They changed everything. So here's our mission
for today. We need to figure out. How five guys
from Compton, California managed to bridge racial
lines, scare the living daylights out of the
FBI and become, well, arguably the most influential
act in hip hop history. It's a huge question.
And to answer it, we have to go beyond the, you
know, the headlines or the basic VH1 behind the
music story. Right. We really need to look at
the chart beta, the historical records, the biographical
accounts and just the nuts and bolts of the industry
that they completely disrupted. We're going to
talk about that. rise the the very messy feuds
the tragedy and of course the legacy but before
we get to that molotov cocktail moment in 88
we have to set the stage because i think a lot
of people just assume nwa appeared out of nowhere
you know fully formed wearing all black and scowling
which is definitely not the case i mean if you
drop yourself into compton in 1987 the soundtrack
of the city is it's not what you'd expect okay
so paint that picture for us yeah what are the
kids in compton listening to Right before NWA
drops. They're listening to ElectroHop. ElectroHop.
So we're talking about what, like breakdancing
beats? That kind of thing. Exactly. Think Africa,
Bambata, planet rock. It's high energy. It's
uptempo, very danceable. It's music made for
popping and locking. Very, very synthesized.
So not the gritty street level storytelling we
associate with the West Coast just a couple of
years later. Not even close. In fact, the dominant
group on the West Coast scene at this time, and
this is such crucial context, was the world class
wrecking crew. OK, I have seen photos of the
world class wrecking crew. And we need to describe
this for you, the listener, because it is it's
shocking given who is in the group. It's visually
jarring if you only know the later history. We
are talking shiny satin jackets, sequin jumpsuits.
Laced gloves. Yes, laced glove. It was very,
very Prince inspired, wasn't it? Totally. And
the reason this matters so much is that. Dr.
Dre, the man who would eventually craft the most
hardcore sound in hip hop. Yeah. He was the DJ
and producer for this group. He was wearing the
sequins. He had a stethoscope around his neck.
It's such a huge disconnect, but you can feel
the ground shifting beneath them. I mean, while
the clubs were playing electro, the streets were
getting a lot harder. This is the height of the
crack epidemic in Los Angeles. Right. It's tearing
through neighborhoods. Gang violence was spiking.
So you have the split. You know, the music was
all about partying, but the reality was just
about survival. And that creates the vacuum.
Right. For what critics would eventually label
gangster rap. Right. Although, and this is a
distinction we are. absolutely going to keep
coming back to the group themselves they hated
that term they preferred reality rap yes yes
they saw themselves as journalists you know if
you're a war correspondent and you take a picture
of a battlefield nobody accuses you of promoting
war you're just documenting it that was their
argument We're just showing you what's happening
in our neighborhood. Exactly. But the critics
and definitely the parents, they did not see
it that way. No, they did not. OK, let's get
into the assembly of this team, because it really
is like a heist movie, you know, where you have
to recruit the specialist for each job. And it
all starts with the financier. Easy. Eric Wright.
Now, Easy wasn't a rapper. Not at first. No,
not at all. Easy was a street guy. He was a drug
dealer. And he'd accumulated a pretty significant
amount of cash. We're talking tens of thousands
of dollars from the streets. And he had the foresight
to realize that the drug game had a very short
shelf life. You end up dead or in prison. Pretty
much the only two outcomes. So he wanted to go
legitimate. He wanted to get into the music business.
So he co -founds Ruthless Records with a veteran
industry manager named Jerry Heller. And we will
get to Jerry Heller later because that relationship
is... Let's just say complicated. Oh, yeah. But
EZ needed talent. He had the money, but he didn't
have the music. Right. And this brings us to
a really great little anecdote about EZ's persistence.
He was trying to get an introduction to a guy
named Steve Yano. And who was Steve Yano? Yano
was a legend in the L .A. scene. He ran a record
stall at the Rhodium Swap Meet. The Swap Meet.
That feels so quintessentially West Coast. It
was the distribution hub. I mean, if you could
get your takes all at the rhodium, you had a
shot. Yano was the tastemaker. And Easy just
kept badgering him, trying to get into that inner
circle. And at first, Yano just blew him off.
He wasn't interested in some kid with drug money.
But Easy just didn't take no for an answer. He
was relentless, and that persistence is such
a key character trait for EZE. He eventually
wore Yano down. Yano was impressed by the hustle
and arranged a meeting that would, well, literally
change history. He introduced EZE to Dr. Dre.
So you have the money meeting the music. Exactly.
EZ had the capital and the vision for an empire.
Dre had the sonic architecture. He was so tired
of the world -class wrecking crew. He wanted
to make something harder, something that reflected
what he was actually seeing outside his window.
But they still needed a voice. They needed a
writer. And that's where Ice Cube comes in. O'Shea
Jackson. Now, Cube wasn't a street guy, was he?
No, not in the same way. Cube was actually going
to school. He was studying architectural drafting
in Arizona for a bit, but he was always - He
was always writing rhymes. He was in a local
group called CIA. So the initial core is Eazy
-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube. And we have to mention
another producer who, well, who often gets erased
from the history books a little bit. Arabian
Prince. Yeah, Arabian Prince feels like the Pete
Best of NWA sometimes. He was a founding member.
a producer and a rapper and his style was very
much rooted in that electro hop sound we were
just talking about right and that tension between
the old electro sound and the new gangsta sound
is perfectly captured in their very first single
panic zone panic zone from 1987. i went back
and listened to this track and if you played
it for me totally out of context i would never
in a million years guess it was nwa it sounds
like a techno track it really does it's got that
rapid fire beat it's very synthesized fits that
arabian prince vibe perfectly but there is a
piece of trivia about this song that just it
absolutely blew my mind when i found it in the
research the title the title it wasn't originally
called panic zone tell the listener what it was
called this is incredible it was originally titled
hispanic zone hispanic zone yes it was co -written
by a mexican rapper named crazy d the song was
basically about crazy d's life and the neighborhood
where he lived so we almost had The world's most
dangerous group launching with a track called
Hispanic Zone. It's unbelievable. It's incredible
to think about. But this is where we see the
business savvy of Dr. Dre kicking in really,
really early. So what did Dre do? Dre looked
at the title and he advised Crazy D to change
it. He basically said, look. If you put the word
Hispanic in the title, it's going to hurt sales.
It's going to pigeonhole the record. Wow. So
even in 1987, before they're superstars, before
any of this, Dre is thinking about branding.
and marketability. Completely. He's thinking
about broad appeal. So they changed Hispanic
to panic. It's such a massive what if moment
in music history. I mean, if I stick with Hispanic
zone, maybe NWA never becomes NWA. Maybe they
just stay a local novelty act. It just shows
that they were still trying to figure out their
identity. You know, they weren't locked in yet.
So to round out the group, Dre brings in his
buddy from the Wrecking Crew. DJ Yella, a really
reliable, talented DJ who had great chemistry
with Dre from their old days. And finally, they
recruit the sixth member, the final piece of
the puzzle. MC Ren, Lorenzo Patterson, just a
ferocious lyricist who brought this very dark,
very serious edge to the group. So the team is
assembled. They release a compilation album called
N .W .A. and the Posse in 1987. Which is a bit
of a misnomer, isn't it? Yeah, I looked at the
track list. NWA is barely on it. They only appear
on, what, three of the 11 tracks? It was really
more of a showcase for ruthless records. You
had Panic Zone, you had 8 -Ball, Dope Man, and
Eazy -E's big solo track, Boys in the Hood. But
even with that really limited output, it charted.
It hit number 39 on the Billboard Top R &B Hip
Hop Chart. Which was the proof of concept. It
showed Eazy and Jerry Eller that there was a
hungry audience for this content. The appetizer
was a hit. Now it was time for the main course.
1988. The Sonic Molotov Cocktail. Straight out
of Compton. This is the moment. This is when
everything changes. Let's break down the opening
salvo. Because I don't think there has ever been
an album in any genre that starts with three
punches this hard. It's completely relentless.
Okay, so track one. Straight out of Compton.
The introduction. It's the manifesto. You are
now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.
That opening line, that's the thesis for the
entire album. They are telling you right from
the jump, we are not from New York. We aren't
from the glamorous parts of L .A. We are from
Compton. And they made Compton sound like a war
zone and a badge of honor at the same time. They
put it on the map. Before this album, Compton
was just another suburb. After this, it was a
mythological place in the global imagination.
They had to go straight into track two. And this
is the one that really, really scared the establishment.
Fuck that police. It's hard to overstate how
shocking this was in 1988. I mean, you have to
remember, this is the era of just say no. This
is the era of respectability politics. And here
you have a group of young black men putting the
entire institution of the police on trial. Literally.
The song is structured like a court case. It
is. Judge Stray presiding. And they aren't just,
you know, yelling insults at the police. They
are listing specific grievances. They're talking
about racial profiling. They're talking about
brutality. The fact that, as the lyrics say,
police think they have the authority to kill
a minority. It was a protest song. Full stop.
It absolutely was. It was a primal scream against
the conditions they were living under. This wasn't
manufactured rage. It was real. And then, before
you can even catch your breath, you're at track
three. Gangsta Gangsta. Which pivots from the
external enemy, the police, to the internal lifestyle.
This is the track that describes the worldview
of the gangsta. Life ain't nothing but bitches
and money. It's so nihilistic. It's hedonistic.
And it paints a picture of a world where empathy
is a weakness. And this is where the sociological
aspect comes in. They're showing you the product
of the environment they just described in the
first two tracks. No, we mentioned that term
gangsta rap earlier. And the media, they heard
Gangsta Gangsta. They said, aha, that's the genre
name. It was an easy label and a very convenient
one for them because it allowed the media to
just dismiss the music as being criminal. If
you call it gangster rap, you're implying that
the artists are just thugs promoting violence.
But Ice Cube hated that label. He despised it.
He called it reality rap. Explain that distinction
for us. Why does that specific wording matter
so much? Because words have power. Reality rap
frames the artist as a journalist, a mirror.
Ice Cube's argument was always, don't shoot the
messenger. You know, if you don't like what we're
saying in our songs, maybe you should fix the
neighborhood we're rapping about. He was saying
that they were documenting the symptoms of a
sick society, not causing the sickness itself.
That is a crucial distinction. Let's talk about
the production for a second, because the sound
of this album is just as important as the lyrics.
Oh, this is the Dr. Dre genius really coming
into bloom. It's so noisy. It's chaotic. It's
a wall of sound. Dre was using samples, live
instrumentation, and heavy, heavy percussion.
The drums on this album, specifically those TR
-808 kicks, they hit you in the chest. It really
does sound like the city. It sounds like traffic
and sirens and people yelling. Precisely. It's
immersive. And then you have the writing. And
this is another area where the casual listener
might get confused. Easy is the front man. He's
on the cover. He's the star. But he wasn't writing
the words. No. The DOC, Ice Cube, and MC Ren
were the primary writers. So when you hear Easy
rapping those iconic lines in Boys in the Hood
or 8 -Ball, he's essentially an actor performing
a script written by Cube. In a sense, yes. But
we can't discredit Easy's performance. I mean,
he had that voice. That high -pitched. nasal
wine. It shouldn't have worked, but it was perfect.
It cut through the heavy bass like a knife. He
had a charisma that you just can't teach. So
even if he didn't write the words, he owned them.
Now, you would think that a group rapping about
killing police and selling drugs would be completely
blacklisted by the industry. And well, they were
banned from almost every single mainstream radio
station. MTV refused to play the video for Straight
Outta Compton. And yet the album went double
platinum. Which is millions and millions of copies.
How? I mean, how do you sell millions of records
with absolutely zero airplay? You leverage the
controversy. This album was one of the first
big adopters of the parental advisory label.
That black and white sticker. Parental advisory.
Explicit lyrics. The RIAA had introduced that
standard stickering around 1985, but NWA wore
it like a badge of honor. But wait, usually a
warning label is the kiss of death. I mean, it
means Walmart won't stock you. It means parents
won't buy it for their kids. For a pop artist,
yes. For a rebellious rap group. It was the greatest
marketing tool ever invented. It was a giant
sign that told every teenager in America, this
is the forbidden fruit. This is the stuff your
mom absolutely hates. Exactly. Nothing makes
a suburban kid want to buy a tape more than knowing
his parents and the FBI hate it. The ban created
this mystique. You had to seek it out. It became
a word of mouth phenomenon. And speaking of the
FBI. We have to talk about the letter because
this feels like a plot point from a movie that
is just too ridiculous to be true. But it is
100 % documented fact. So who started this? Where
did the pressure come from? It began with an
organization called Focus on the Family, a conservative
Christian group. They caught wind of the lyrics
to Fuck That Police and were predictably horrified.
So they lobbied Washington. They applied pressure.
And somehow this pressure reached the desk of
a man named Milt Alaric. And who was Milt Alaric?
He wasn't just some low -level clerk. He was
an assistant director of the FBI. He was based
in Washington, D .C., dealing with major federal
crimes. And this guy takes time out of his day
to write a letter to a small record label in
a strip mall in California. It is absurd. He
wrote a letter to Ruthless Records and their
distributor Priority Records. What did it say?
It was on official FBI letterhead, and it said
essentially that advocating violence and assault
is wrong and that the law enforcement community
took exception to their music. That sounds like
a veiled threat. Nice little record label you
have there. Shame if something were to happen
to it. It was an intimidation tactic. The goal
was to scare them. You know, maybe get the label
to drop them, get the distributor to back out.
But it backfired spectacularly. Completely. I
mean, imagine you're Eazy -E. You are selling
an image of being the world's most dangerous
group. And then the Federal Bureau of Investigation
sends you a letter confirming that you are, in
fact, dangerous. You frame that letter. You frame
it and you send a press release to every newspaper
in the country. Look, the FBI is scared of us.
It legitimized them. It proved to the fans that
NWA wasn't just playing pretend. They were actually
upsetting the government. The letter is actually
in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now, which
is just... The ultimate irony. But it wasn't
all just free publicity. There were real world
consequences from this. Well, yeah. The blue
wall of silence went up. Police departments all
across the country started communicating with
each other. They flat out refused to provide
security for NWA concerts. And you can't get
insurance for a stadium show without police security.
Exactly. So they effectively couldn't tour. They
were selling millions and millions of albums,
but they couldn't play the arenas that wanted
to book them. It hit them right in the pocketbook.
I want to zoom out for a second and look at the
politics of this. We mentioned the war on crime
earlier. Yeah. The late 80s was a very specific
political climate. You had the Reagan administration
followed by Bush. The whole rhetoric was tough
on crime. We saw the militarization of police
forces, the introduction of mandatory minimum
sentences and these huge crackdowns on inner
city neighborhoods. So when N .W .A. comes out
with this album, they aren't just entertainment.
No. There's a researcher, Brian J. McCann, who
has studied this extensively, and he argues that
the political elite viewed gangster rap as an
existential threat. An existential threat. That
is a heavy term. It means a threat to your very
existence or the existence of your system. They
truly feared that this music was going to radicalize
the youth. And it wasn't just black youth they
were worried about, was it? That was the real
fear. They were terrified that white suburban
kids were listening to Fuck the Police and starting
to question authority. NWA was effectively exporting
the get it perspective directly into the living
rooms of middle America. So fuck that police
became this symbol of resistance against the
system. Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism in this
context really means the dismantling of social
safety nets while at the same time increasing
the power of the police state. NWA was pointing
a finger and saying the system isn't broken.
It's designed to crush us. And that message resonated
not just in Compton but globally. So they're
on top of the world. They're political icons.
They're rich. Yeah. But money. Money changes
everything. And that brings us to the first fracture.
Late 1989, early 1990. Ice cube, please. the
primary writer, the voice of the group's constants.
He just walks away. Why? I mean, what was the
specific issue? It all comes down to the contract,
and we need to get a little technical here to
understand why Cube was so angry. Please, break
it down for us. Okay, so in the music industry,
you have points or royalties on an album. Eazy
-E owned the label, Ruthless Records. Jerry Heller
was the manager. See, Heller manages the group,
and Eazy -E owns the recordings. Correct, but
here's the problem. Jerry Heller was taking a
percentage as the manager, but because he was
also Eazy's business partner in the label, there
were accusations of double dipping. Where did
that leave the rest of the guys? With the scraps.
Ice Cube got a lawyer and looked at the books.
He realized that he had written roughly half
of the lyrics on a double platinum album. Straight
out of Compton had generated millions and millions
in revenue. And how much was Cube taking home
from that? Reports vary, but Cube claimed he
had only been paid about $32 ,000. $32 ,000?
For writing half of one of the biggest, most
important albums of the decade? The math just
didn't add up. Cube felt he was being completely
exploited. He felt Eazy and Jerry were getting
rich off his labor. So he refused to sign the
long -term contract they offered him. He bet
on himself. He left the biggest group in the
world to go solo. It was a massive, massive risk.
And this kicked off the diss wars. Because in
hip -hop, you don't just send a cease and desist
letter. You send a beat. Round one. N .W .A.
strikes first. They release the EP 100 Miles
and Run In in 1990. and they attacked him pretty
directly on that oh yeah on the title track dre
raps we started with five but yo one couldn't
take it so now it's four because the fifth couldn't
make it calling him a quitter soft and the music
video was even more explicit it showed the four
remaining members standing together united while
an ice cube look -alike is being released from
a jail cell the implication being We're the real
street guys doing time and you're the sellout
who couldn't handle it. They escalated it even
further on their next album, Evil Forzaggin,
which is niggas for life spelled backwards. On
the track, Real Niggas, they call him a Benedict
Arnold. That is a very specific historical reference
for a rap song. It implies treason. To them,
Cube wasn't just a guy who quit a job. He was
a traitor to the family. So Cube is getting hammered
from all sides. How does he respond? Well, at
first he kept it pretty cool, little jabs here
and there on his own records. But then on his
album Death Certificate, he decided it was time
to drop the nuclear bomb. No Vaseline. This track,
it is widely considered one of the most brutal,
most effective diss tracks in the history of
the genre. Why? What makes it so effective, so
devastating? It's the specificity. He doesn't
just call them names. He surgically dismantles
their business arrangement. He raps, you got
jealous and I got my own company. but I'm a man
and ain't nobody humping me. Implying that the
rest of the group were being, let's say, compromised
by their business relationship with Jerry Heller.
He painted Eazy -E not as a boss, but as a puppet.
He called the rest of the group bozos and carpent
copies. He effectively told the entire world,
these guys are getting ripped off and they are
too stupid to even realize it. But we have to
address the controversy here. There were lines
in that song that crossed the line for a lot
of people. Yes, absolutely. Cube directed significant
vitriol at Jerry Heller, and he specifically
targeted his Jewish heritage. He refers to Heller
as a white Jew telling you what to do. And that
sparked accusations of anti -Semitism. Rightfully
so. It was ugly. It caused a firestorm of condemnation
from civil rights groups like the Simon Wiesenthal
Center. But if you look at it strictly from the
perspective of a battle rap. It worked. It completely
neutralized them. It made NWA look weak. It made
them look like they were being controlled. And
while all this infighting is happening, the sound
is changing. We're moving into the early 90s.
Dr. Dre is evolving. That frantic, noisy, sample
-heavy sound of Straight Outta Compton is being
replaced. IG funk. E -funk. Gangsta funk. Dre
started slowing things down, sampling Parliament
Funkadelic, George Clinton. It's got that slower
tempo, that high -pitched. whining synthesizer
line that just became iconic. It's smoother.
It's music for driving a lowrider on a Sunday
afternoon, not for running from the cops. You
can hear the prototype of that sound on the NWA
track, Always Into Something. And despite Cube
leaving, their second full -length album, Niggas
For Life, hit number one on the Billboard 200.
Which is a huge milestone. It was the first hardcore
rap album to top the pop charts. It proved they
didn't need radio. They were the mainstream now.
But... With that mainstream success came a much
darker, much more intense spotlight. And we have
to talk about the Dee Barnes incident. This is
a very dark chapter, and it's important that
we are very clear about the facts. In January
of 1991, Dr. Dre assaulted a TV host named Dee
Barnes. She hosted Pump It Up, which was a popular
hip hop show at the time. It was. And the show
had aired a segment about the feud between N
.W .A. and Ice Cube. NWA felt the coverage was
biased towards Cube. They felt it made them look
bad. So they saw her at a party. At an album
release party in Hollywood, Dre approached her.
And according to the reports and Barnes' own
account, he assaulted her brutally. He slammed
her face and her body against a brick wall. He
tried to throw her down a flight of stairs. He
followed her into the women's restroom and grabbed
her by the hair. It sounds like a terrifying
ordeal. It was. And what makes it even worse,
in retrospect, was the group's reaction at the
time. They didn't apologize. They showed no remorse.
I remember reading a quote from Dre. He told
Rolling Stone magazine, quote, It ain't no big
thing. I just threw her through a door. It ain't
no big thing. MC Ren said she deserved it. Easy
E joked about it. It showed a level of misogyny
that went way beyond just lyrics on a record.
This was real -world violence against a woman
in the industry. It's a permanent stain on the
legacy. It is. Dre has since apologized multiple
times over the years. He stated he was young,
he was drinking, he was out of his mind, and
that he has worked to be a better man. But we
can't erase that history. It's part of the story.
So 1991. They are number one on the charts. They
are more controversial than ever. Yeah. And then
the second fracture. Dr. Dre leaves. The architect
of the sound walked away. Is it the same story
as Ice Cube? It's the same story. It was about
money. It was about contracts. Dre, with help
from his bodyguard, Suge Knight, realized that
Jerry Heller and Easy were taking the lion's
share of the profits. But this time... Dre didn't
just leave alone. He had a new partner. Suge
Knight. Maybe the most intimidating figure in
music history. A former football player. Just
a massive guy. With a reputation for violence
and intimidation. Dre and Suge formed Death Row
Records. But Dre was still under contract to
Ruthless. And this is where the lore gets really
crazy. Suge Knight went to meet with Eazy -E
to negotiate Dre's release from his contract.
Negotiate. The story goes that Sue just showed
up with guys holding baseball bats and lead pipes.
He allegedly told Easy that he knew where his
mother lived. He coerced him. He threatened him
into signing. That is the allegation. And Easy
signed the release. But, and this is where Easy's
business genius comes back in one more time,
he didn't sign away everything. What did he keep?
He kept a percentage of Dr. Dre's future publishing.
Wait. So that means... It means that when Dr.
Dre went on to release The Chronic, one of the
biggest and most influential albums of all -time
Ruthless records was getting paid. Every single
time, nothing but a G -thang played on the radio.
Easy, you gotta check. That's the ultimate last
laugh. It infuriated Dre, and it sparked diss
wars. Round two. This time, it was Ruthless versus
Death Row. And Dre fired the first shot. with
Fuck With Dre Day. And the video. Oh, the video.
They had a character called Sleazy E, a tiny
guy with a jury curl running around looking desperate
for money. It was designed to be as humiliating
as possible. People thought Easy was finished.
They thought, without Dre's beats, Easy is nothing.
But Easy proved them all wrong. He released an
EP called It's On, Dr. Dre, 187 Killa. And 187
is the police code for murder. He was going for
the kill. The main track, Real Mythy Fuckin'
G's, is just a brilliant piece of battle rap.
How did he attack Dre? What was his angle? He
went right after his authenticity. He called
him a studio gangster. He said Dre wasn't really
from the streets. He was just an actor playing
a part. And unlike NWA's attacks on Cube, Eazy
had visual evidence. The photos. Eazy dug up
those old promo photos of the world -class Wrecking
Crew. The sequence. The lipstick, the makeup,
the lace gloves. And he put them in the music
video and on the album's insert. I mean, imagine
being a fan in 1993. You think Dr. Dre is the
hardest guy on the planet. And then Eazy shows
you a picture of him looking like a member of
a disco group. It was devastating. Eazy rapped,
damn, it's a trip. How a nigga could switch so
quick from wearing lipstick to smoking on chronic
at picnics. That line. It just destroyed Drez
Street cred for a minute there. It completely
leveled the playing field. It showed that Easy
could survive and thrive on his own. Where is
MC Ren in all of this? Ren was kind of stuck
in the middle. He stayed with Roofless Records.
He was critical of Eazy in interviews. He called
him a big head and a wannabe megastar, but he
didn't leave. He was just trying to build his
solo career while his two best friends were tearing
each other apart in public. It felt like this
feud would just last forever. It was so personal,
so bitter. Life has a way of intervening. March
of 1995. EZ goes to the hospital. He thinks he
has asthma or maybe bronchitis. He's been having
trouble breathing for a while. And the diagnosis
shocks the entire world. It wasn't asthma. It
was AIDS. And it was very advanced. It happened
so unbelievably fast. Incredibly fast. From the
time of his diagnosis to his death was only a
matter of weeks. He died on March 26, 1995. He
was only 31 years old. Just a baby, really. Was
there any reconciliation before he passed away?
There was. Eazy and MC Ren patched things up.
They even recorded a duet called Tha Muthafuckin'
Real. And importantly, Dre visited him in the
hospital. He did. He did. By that point, Eazy
was unconscious. But Dre went to his bedside.
It was a moment of silence between former brothers.
And what about DJ Yella? Yella was the loyal
soldier to the very end. He was the only member
who never beefed with Eazy. He stayed by his
side. He produced Yeezy's final album. He was
a pallbearer at the funeral. Yeezy's death seemed
to just snap everyone out of the hate. It forced
a total reevaluation. The anger just evaporated.
In later songs like What's the Difference, Dre
raps about Yeezy with pure love. He says, I'm
still with you. The tragedy cemented the bond
that the business had broken. Let's fast forward
a bit into the late 90s, early 2000s. The legacy
continued to grow. And in 2000, we had the Up
in Smoke tour. This was like the Avengers assembling
for hip -hop. You had Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren,
Snoop Dogg, Eminem. It was the biggest hip -hop
tour of all time. And they did a semi -reunion
on that tour. They did. For the NWA portion of
the show, Snoop Dogg would come out and rap Yeezy's
verses. It was a tribute. So why didn't they
ever release a full reunion album? I know they
tried to. Not these niggas again. That was the
working title for it. It's a great title. It
is. It failed because of corporate red tape.
It was a business nightmare. You had Dre on Aftermath
Interscope. Cube was on priority. Other rights
were held by No Limit Records. The lawyers just
couldn't figure out how to make the deal work
between three competing major labels. It's so
ironic. The business is what started the group
and the business is what prevented the reunion.
Exactly. But the story got a massive second wind
in 2015 with the movie Straight Outta Compton.
This film was in what they called development
hell for a decade. Nobody thought they could
pull it off. But it was a monster hit. Over $200
million at the box office. And the casting. I
mean... O'Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father,
Ice Cube. That could have been a total disaster.
Yeah. It could have been nepotism gone wrong.
But he nailed it. He had the scowl. He had the
cadence. He studied for years to get it right.
And having Dre and Cube as producers meant the
music was perfect. And Easy's widow, Tamika Woodswright,
was involved to protect Easy's legacy. Now, it
sanitized some things. It famously glossed over
the Dee Barnes incident, for example. But it
captured the energy and the spirit of that era
perfectly. Let's talk about the musical legacy
as we start to wrap this up. Yeah. We mentioned
nu metal earlier. Connect those dots for me.
How do you get from N .W .A. to a band like Slipknot?
It's all about the aggression and the rhythm.
N .W .A. introduced a style of rapping that was
really percussive, shouting on the beat. If you
listen to the vocal delivery of bands like Korn
or System of a Down, that staccato, rhythmic
yelling is directly descended from the hostility
of Straight Outta Compton. It's the sound of
alienated male rage. And, of course, Eminem.
Eminem is the direct spiritual successor. Dr.
Dre discovered him, mentored him, and on Forgot
About Dre, Eminem literally raps the instruction.
Just study a tape of N .W .A. He's openly acknowledging
the blueprint. And finally, the institutions.
The FBI hated them. But now. The Library of Congress
preserved the album straight out of Compton in
the National Recording Registry. So the government
is now preserving the Sonic Molotov cocktail.
They have a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame in 2016. It's the quintessential American
story, isn't it? You start as the villain and
if you survive long enough and make enough money,
you become the hero. You become the establishment
you fought against. So what does this all mean?
Why are we still talking about this group almost
40 years later? I think it matters because five
guys from a neighborhood that America wanted
to forget decided that their story, the story
of Compton, was worth telling. They didn't ask
for permission. They didn't try to make it palatable.
They just said, this is our reality. And by doing
that, they forced the entire world to look at
something it really wanted to ignore. They turned
local news into global history. So here's a final
thought for you to take away. We talked about
how the critics at the time dismissed their lyrics
as just violent, misogynistic noise. But the
FBI took it seriously. The United States government
treated a rap song like a weapon. That is the
tell. That's the part that matters. What does
it say about the true power of music when a track
called Panic Zone, a song that was literally
titled as a business decision to avoid the word
Hispanic, eventually evolves into a movement
that the powers that be consider an existential
threat to the entire social order? It says that
art is never just art. If you tell the truth
loudly enough for long enough, it becomes a weapon.
I encourage you to go back and listen to those
albums. Don't just hear the beat. Hear the history.
Hear the protest and hear the warning. It's all
there in the grooves. Thanks for diving deep
with us. We will catch you on the next one.