Eric "Eazy-E" Wright

Born in Compton in 1964. Founded Ruthless Records and co-founded N.W.A, the group that put Compton on the global hip-hop map. His 1988 verse on Straight Outta Compton is one of the most quoted opening lines in rap history.

This is the detail that gets lost behind the persona. Before the fame, there was a company. Eazy put up his own money and started Ruthless Records in Compton, and the label existed before the hits did. No major signed N.W.A into being. An independent label from this city released them, and the distribution deal came to the owner.

That order matters. It is the same order Tyler used out of Hawthorne thirty years later, and the same one Don Cornelius used with 400 dollars: own the thing first, and let the industry negotiate with an owner instead of an applicant.

Ruthless was not a one-group label. He signed Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, a Cleveland group that sounded like nothing on his roster, and was right. Being right about somebody who does not sound like you is the rarest skill in this business.

He died in March 1995 of complications from AIDS, weeks after his diagnosis became public, at thirty one. He used what time he had to say so plainly, at a moment when almost nobody in music would, and that statement reached people no public health campaign was reaching.

Music & Movement carries the line from Ruthless forward, through Dr. Dre to Kendrick.