He didn’t write his own rhymes, still a cardinal sin within hip-hop–apparently unless your name is Drake. Jackson, Eazy had the lyrical prowess of a mischievous fifth grader who smirked incessantly after being sent to the corner for disrupting class. In fact, compared to the lyrically gifted Mr. Cube gets ample credit (and deservedly so) in Straight Outta Compton for being N.W.A.’s chief wordsmith. “At any moment I was ready to bounce because it was like, ‘Yo, if we can’t do this right we shouldn’t do it at all.’” Gary Gray, the Tinsel Town powerhouse is still getting used to the reality that the hell-raising story of N.W.A. A primary producer on Straight Outta Compton alongside Dre, Eazy’s widow Tomica Woods-Wright and the film’s veteran director F.

He is holding court at the Beverly Hills’ regal Four Seasons Hotel during a manic press day. “I didn’t think a studio would have the courage to make … not the way I wanted it made,” admits an in-a-daze Cube to VIBE. Suddenly, damn near the entire world was put on to Compton, the small yet troubled Los Angeles suburb of which N.W.A. Dre” Young, the criminally underrated Lorenzo “MC Ren” Patterson, jovial Antoine “DJ Yella” Carraby and enterprising visionary Eazy-who in 1995, shockingly died of complications from AIDS-raised a conspicuous middle finger at Ronald Reagan’s conservative white America that definitely wasn’t of the belief that #BlackLivesMatter.

Lead lyricist O’Shea “ Ice Cube” Jackson, groundbreaking producer, Andre “ Dr. in the big screen release of Straight Outta Compton, onlookers witnessed the former drug dealer/unlikely rapper and Ruthless Records impresario’s very same impish spirit in all its Jheri curl, Raiders hat glory.īut it was far from all smiles. When fanboys and girls, the curious and skeptics packed theaters to see legendary hip-hop outfit N.W.A.

Eazy e album cover