Parental Discretion Is Advised

by Gerrick D. Kennedy

  By 1989, other networks followed MTV’s lead: Fox debuted Pump It Up, hosted by Dee Barnes, half of Delicious Vinyl’s girl group Body & Soul; comedian Arsenio Hall debuted his talkshow that routinely showcased rap artists; and BET rolled out Rap City, a direct response to Yo! MTV Raps.

  A month after Straight Outta Compton was released, Ruthless and Priority issued Eazy-Duz-It. Like Straight Outta Compton, Dre and Yella produced while Ren, Cube, and the D.O.C. wrote its lyrics from top to bottom.

  The group joined Eazy in promoting his solo album. He was nervous about playing at the Apollo in Harlem—and for good reason, the East Coast was still fairly cool on anything coming out of the West. He got booed, and even worse, the audience tossed things. But Eazy and N.W.A were becoming a national sensation. With Ruthless Records, Eazy cemented his legacy in hip-hop as the first rapper to own a nationally successful record company.

  Where N.W.A’s album was grim, Eazy’s took an almost cartoonish approach in the vein of the Rudy Ray Moore records the men grew up listening to. The bulk of Eazy-Duz-It is dedicated to ribald humor, with lewd songs about being well-endowed, his voracious appetite for women and, far more problematically, violence against them. “I might be a woman beater, but I’m not a pussy eater,” he boasts on “Still Talkin’.” And on “Nobody Move” Eazy attempts to rape a woman before discovering his target is a transexual. He raps about shooting their genitalia because it was “one faggot that I had to hurt.”

  Eazy-Duz-It outsold most of the albums coming out of New York, and would go on to sell 2.5 million copies, with Straight Outta Compton eventually selling 3 million records. As the group got popular, so did the outcry over their lyrics. Mainstream radio shunned them, while some major retailers refused to carry the album. Journalists who landed interviews with Eazy or N.W.A took them to task, especially for their diatribes against women. “We’re not putting down women,” Eazy told one reporter. “It’s just street talk. Women understand that. They like us. They buy our records. They don’t think of us as bad guys. . . . That’s just how you talk about women.” A number of black college radio DJs in the Bay Area decided to ban the music altogether because they felt N.W.A’s image promoted negative racial stereotypes, the same reason many black leaders abhorred them.

  “Words like bitch and nigger may be shocking for somebody who is white, but that’s not why we use them,” Ice Cube explained. “It’s everyday language of people around my neighborhood. When they refer to a girl, they might say ‘bitch,’ or when referring to a guy, they might say, ‘that nigger over there.’ It’s not used by us the way (bigots) used to use it.”

  No groups were more furious of N.W.A’s building mainstream presence than conservatives and law enforcement. In the spring of 1989, Straight Outta Compton was on its way to hitting the one million sales mark, and attempts to censor the group were firing up. N.W.A filmed a video for its next single, “Express Yourself.” The recording was devoid of cursing and its message wasn’t one of violent revelry—instead, it was an empowering message celebrating the freedom of self-expression. Dre even boasts about how he doesn’t smoke weed, ironic given the rest of the album’s content. The direct sample of Charles Wright & the Watts 103 Street Rhythm Band’s funky hit of the same name boosted the record’s radio-friendly appeal.

  The video for “Express Yourself,” however, took on a more provocative message. It opened with slaves toiling on a plantation field before a master strikes a child with his whip, before a shot of the group—dressed head to toe in black and wearing thick gold chains—bursting through a banner inscribed with “I Have a Dream” (the words are blurred in some versions). Again the group is being antagonized by police officers. There are shots of them rapping from behind bars near the child slave from the opening scene, linking the continued persecution of black men to slavery and showing how it’s cyclical. In other scenes, Dre plays the role of the president and parodies John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The video ends with Dre in an electric chair ready for execution. More envelope-pushing than the clip for “Straight Outta Compton,” yet MTV approved it for air. And because the tune was radio friendly and absent of curse words and violent lyrics, radio DJs were permitted to play it. For many, “Express Yourself” was their first taste of N.W.A thanks to radio play, and it soon raced up the rap charts higher than the group’s previous singles. By the summer of 1989 N.W.A was the most popular rap group in the country.

  The group’s popularity was in part boosted by the opposition it faced from religious watchdog groups and law enforcement in response to its lyrics—and the opposition was growing louder by the minute. As N.W.A prepped a forty-date national tour, the 203,000-member Fraternal Order of Police declared a boycott of any musical group that they believed advocated violence against police officers, voting not to provide security services at their concerts (off-duty cops staff most concert security teams). Although Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center, a committee established to keep explicit music away from kids, got major labels to start placing parental warning stickers on profane music years prior, law enforcement intensified its efforts to repress acts they deemed indecent—which was anyone who swore, engaged in erotic posturing, or had violent lyrics.

  Cities like Columbus, Georgia; Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio; Johnstown and Erie, Pennsylvania; and Poughkeepsie and Syracuse, New York, were particularly stringent when it came to policing acts who performed there. Bobby Brown, Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach, LL Cool J, and Gene Simmons all saw themselves arrested for indecency because of their performances during this time. “Basically, I got arrested for humping a couch. I was simulating making love to a girl . . . on the couch. And they just felt like they didn’t need a black man humpin’ a couch in Georgia,” LL Cool J said with a laugh. None of it made much sense, really. For instance, rock band GWAR was restricted from cursing at a concert in Toledo but allowed to decapitate mannequins onstage.

  N.W.A’s first national tour opened in Nashville in the spring of 1989, just after Memorial Day, headlining a bill with Salt-N-Pepa, Kid ’n Play, and Too $hort. A few dates on the tour would be coheadlined by LL Cool J. The group had a flashy set engineered for the tour inspired by the landscape of their hood: Yella’s DJ stand was behind trash cans, and there were street lamps and yellow police-line tape across the front of the stage.

  Drama followed the tour from the very beginning. There was an incident on the group’s first flight, when an argument with a flight attendant forced the plane to land at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport so the twenty-nine person crew could be escorted off. Jerry Heller had to splurge on another round of airline tickets.

  Law enforcement and local community leaders targeting the group added extra scrutiny to the tour. An article in Reverend James C. Dobson’s magazine Focus on the Family Citizen brought attention, and outrage, to N.W.A’s music. The headline alone was startling: “Rap Group N.W.A Says ‘Kill Police.’ ” “Alert local police to the dangers they may face in the wake of this record release,” the article stated in response to the group’s “Fuck tha Police.” Police departments were notified by the magazine’s Christian readers and the song’s lyrics were disseminated via fax among police departments.

  N.W.A agreed not to perform the song on the road, but there was mounting pressure to cancel shows on the tour. Washington, DC; Milwaukee; Chattanooga; and Tyler, Texas, gave in, nixing the group’s tour stops out of fear of riots. Nothing ever happened, though.

  In Cincinnati, federal agents conducted a drug search on them and asked if they were gang members using the tour as a front for a crack business, and the show only went on after Bengal linebacker and city councilman Reggie Williams, along with several of his teammates, spoke up in support of the group.

  In Toledo, N.W.A performed only after Reverend Floyd E. Rose went public about police who were pressuring local black clergymen. “Rightly or wrongly, the perception in our community is that the ‘police think they have the authority to kill a minority,’ ” Rose wrote to the poli
ce chief, quoting the song, “and that [police] think that every black teenager who is wearing a gold bracelet and driving a nice car is ‘selling narcotics.’ . . . I must say that while I do not like the music and abhor the vulgar language, I will not be used to stifle legitimate anger and understandable resentment.”

  And when the group hit Kansas City, the city’s acting mayor, Emanuel Cleaver, tried to stop their concert, imploring the group to “Take your trash back to LA.” At the end of the show, Cube told the crowd, “We just showed your City Council that blacks, whites, Mexicans, and Orientals can get together for a concert without killing each other.” As concerts went on, N.W.A noticed something peculiar: More white kids were in the crowd singing the words to all their songs. Cube would later surmise that 30 to 40 percent of the group’s audience and record buyers were white.

  “These people aren’t doing anything but capitalizing off of death and violence, and it’s something that we should not want to promote or tolerate,” Lieutenant Harry Taylor of the Compton Police said of N.W.A during a newscast covering the controversy.

  Cube had emerged as the group’s de facto spokesperson, defending their right to say what they wanted to say on record in interviews throughout the tour. “We’re not talking about all police. But there are some police that just don’t give a fuck. They figure they got a gun and a badge and they can treat you any kind of way,” he said. “Just because a kid hears a song, that don’t mean he’s going to take action. A song is a song. Just like if I made a song called, uh, ‘Fuck Your Mother.’ You think the kids are gonna go out and beat up their mother? For a rap song?”

  As the backlash against N.W.A intensified, tragedy befell Dre and his family early into the tour. Late on the night of June 25, 1989, his mother, Verna, was awakened by her stepson, Warren, informing her that two men were in the living room wanting to speak to her regarding Tyree.

  Verna raced to the door. There stood Tyree’s best friend, Jerry, along with two men in suits carrying briefcases.

  “What happened to Tyree?”

  The two men, homicide detectives it turned out, came with bad news. Tyree was dead.

  Tyree, who was twenty-one with his own son and had just lost his own father three weeks prior, was with three friends when he was confronted by a gang member. Things turned physical. In the throngs of blows between the two, Tyree’s opponent grabbed his head and jerked hard. He fell, striking his head on the concrete, and never regained consciousness. “Neck got broke and all kind’a shit,” Dre said.

  With their tour bus traveling through mountains, the repeated 911 dispatches to his pager failed to get through to Dre. At a truck stop he jumped to call home and fell to his knees when he heard. Dre cried for days, returning home to help his mother plan the funeral. The last words Tyree heard while alive, Dre later said, was “Fuck tha Police” blaring from a nearby radio. “So it kinda fucked with me. My brother was my best friend,” said Dre, who admitted Tyree’s death pushed him to drinking.

  And trouble continued. A July tour stop in Birmingham, Alabama, would later bring serious trouble to MC Ren. According to a lawsuit filed in November 1990, a woman named Sheila Davis alleged Ren lured her aboard the group’s tour bus at a post-concert party and raped her. Davis, who was sixteen at the time of the alleged assault, said the incident resulted in a baby.

  No criminal charges were filed against Ren, then twenty, who denied the two ever had sex. Davis sued Ren, along with Eazy, Yella, and Dre (she didn’t name Cube in the suit). Her lawyer, Gusty Yearout, stated that a blood test established a 99.8 percent probability that Ren was the biological father; however, Jerry Heller maintained no proof of paternity was presented and that Ren passed a polygraph test.

  The case originally went to trial in August 1992 and was settled for $350,000, but the group refused to pay. One of their lawyers at the time, Louis Sirkin, offered a sworn statement saying his clients never approved the settlement, which prompted a circuit judge to impose $16 million in penalties that the group had to pay Davis because it violated the settlement. The decision was then reversed, and the case was set for a retrial before being resolved out of court the following year. Davis, who is now deceased, was awarded $2 million. Years later Yearout recalled having to take the group’s depositions and described everyone except Eazy as calm and polite. “Eazy-E was kind of a smart-ass during the deposition,” Yearout said. “He said things like . . . Ren would never rape anybody without wearing a prophylactic.”

  There was trouble in-house too.

  As the tour went on, Cube grew weary of the financial split between members. Unlike the rest of his N.W.A brothers, Cube still lived at home with his parents, despite the group’s success. Cube was annoyed by the profits he got from Eazy-Duz-It, an album he considered an N.W.A project given they all greatly shaped its creation. Combined, Straight Outta Compton, of which he’d cowritten a great deal, and Eazy-Duz-It accounted for more than five million records sold. Cube only earned $32,700 in album royalties, and of the $650,000 the group went on to gross on tour, he took home $23,000, as Jerry collected $130,000. “Eazy’s royalty statement came in. So I just know that this money is about to be broke up five ways, and everybody’s gonna get paid,” Cube said. “And dude was like, ‘Nah, this is Eazy-E money, we getting N.W.A money. I’m like, ‘Eazy-E and N.W.A’s the same thing!’ ”

  Between shows Cube had seen people selling merchandise with the group’s name and likeness on them and was brushed aside when he inquired about profits. He was irate when the group declined an offer to go on Jesse Jackson’s Voices of America for an episode about controversial music simply because the appearance wouldn’t be paid. After a Columbus, Ohio, date, Cube went to Eazy about his grievances with Jerry. He told him that it wasn’t working with Jerry. “It’s either him or me,” Cube told Eazy. Not one to be pushed into a corner Eazy shrugged off Cube’s ultimatum and told him, “N.W.A is me, Dre, Yella . . . and Jerry Heller; here’s your plane ticket home.”

  “Jerry Heller lives in a half-million-dollar house in Westlake, and I’m still living at home with my mother. Jerry’s driving a Corvette and a Mercedes Benz and I’ve got a Suzuki Sidekick,” he groused to a reporter. “Jerry’s making all the money, and I’m not. Jerry has no creative input into the group: he just makes all the fucked-up decisions and gets all the fucking money.”

  “There was no money. When he did ‘Dopeman,’ ‘8-Ball,’ and all those other songs, there was no payment. It was Eric saying, ‘You want a car? You want something?’ Stuff like that,” Sir Jinx recalled. “There was a little money when they started doing shows. But by the time that happened, Cube was a star already and he knew a little bit about the business and it was like something ain’t right. He started saying he wasn’t comfortable.”

  While on the road, Cube privately consulted the group’s publicist, Pat Charbonnet, who advised him to get a lawyer. Things came to a head when Priority Records staff met the group in Arizona to present them with plaques to commemorate a million copies sold of Straight Outta Compton—and checks for $75,000 each. The money was payment for previous works and an advance on their next album, but it came with a catch: they’d have to sign a contract since their previous agreement was nothing more than a handshake.

  Cube was pissed. This was money he was entitled to and he shouldn’t have to sign a contract in order to get it. Cube at least wanted to show the paperwork to his lawyer before accepting the deal. “Jerry told me that lawyers were made to cause trouble,” he said. “But lawyers only cause trouble if there’s trouble to cause.” Cube and his lawyer attempted to negotiate with Ruthless because outside of this he had no qualms. “Not even with Eazy or anybody in the group,” he said. With no plans to sign, Cube implored his bandmates to do the same. Ultimately everybody except Cube signed on the dotted line and were baffled to learn he didn’t.

  “It was kinda like, why didn’t you sign the contract. $75,000. Broke as we been?” Yella said.

  NO ONE CAN DO IT BETTER


  As N.W.A forged on amid controversy and success, Ruthless Records was growing. J. J. Fad’s “Supersonic” was a Grammy-nominated hit, and Eazy’s sensational debut was topped by Straight Outta Compton, a record that catapulted N.W.A into infamy as the most controversial group in the country.

  The label was just getting started.

  Since arriving from Dallas, D.O.C. had delivered on his potential by contributing to both Eazy and N.W.A’s albums. Ever loyal, he instantly became Dre’s go-to guy and a sturdy behind-the-scenes utility player, penning lyrics and helping shape records. While on tour with N.W.A, the D.O.C. stepped into the spotlight as a solo artist with his own opening slot on the show.

  At first D.O.C. played just eight minutes, but the crowd ate him up—his complex rhymes and dexterous flow made him a beast on the mic. Gradually his set grew. A few extra minutes in Kansas City. Twelve in Houston. By August, he was doing a thirty-minute set. It felt good, especially since he felt marginalized by the group he was working for. “I couldn’t really attach myself to the N.W.A thing, the way I wanted to. I always got, ‘You’re not in the group.’ And that stung,” D.O.C. admitted. “From my perspective we were all together in this. I didn’t want to separate us and compete because that was the nature of hip-hop in those days, but I took on that attitude: Let me show you guys how this thing supposed to go.”

  Dre made D.O.C.’s debut, No One Can Do It Better, his next priority. He pulled out all his favorite funk jams and breakbeats for the record: “Impeach the President,” “Hook and Sling,” “Funky Drummer,” “Chocolate City,” and obscure picks from Heatwave, Sly & the Family Stone, B. T. Express, Lou Donaldson, Yellow Sunshine, and Teddy Pendergrass. D.O.C. wasn’t interested much in tough-guy posturing, instead opting for braggadocio rhymes about his prowess as an emcee.