Rap Group N.W.A. Releases "Straight Outta Compton"

It's a summer evening in 1984 in Compton, a neighborhood in the south central area of Los Angeles.

A pickup truck speeds through the sweltering streets.

Inside, 19-year-old Eric Wright bobs his head in time with the music on the radio as he chats with the driver, his older cousin, Horace Butler.

Horace is a well-known local drug dealer, and Eric is one of his most trusted runners, responsible for delivering drugs to customers.

But that's not why Horace has picked him up today.

In fact, Eric has no idea where Horace is taking him until they arrive at their destination, a boarded-up house with an overgrown front yard.

Horace and Eric get out of the truck and walk through the tall grass and tangled weeds toward the abandoned property.

But Horace doesn't go inside.

Instead, he tells Eric to keep a lookout while he ducks along this side of the house.

When he comes back a moment or two later, he has a furtive look on his face and a paper grocery bag in his hands.

The two young men then hurry back to Horace's truck.

Once they're back in the vehicle, Horace hands over the bag to Eric.

As he accelerates down the street, Horace tells Eric to look inside.

The bag contains several bundles of cash bound with rubber bands.

Must be tens of thousands of dollars.

Horace tells Eric he's going to drive him home and ask if he wouldn't mind keeping an eye on the money for a little while.

Eric agrees immediately.

He worships his cousin as a hero.

So carefully, he wraps the bundles of cash back up, joking about not wanting to lose any.

He has no idea, though, that this is the last conversation he and Horace will ever have.

Just hours after Eric Wright has dropped off at home, Horace Grant is murdered in a drive-by shooting.

Despite Horace's violent end, Eric will step up to take his cousin's place.

But while he will soon develop a reputation as a drug dealer locally, it will be Eric's true passion that will ultimately make him a household name across the country.

Only a few years after Horace's murder, Eric will join the rap group NWA and help introduce the world to gangsta rap with a controversial album, straight Outta Compton, which will be released on August 8, 1988.

From Noiser and Airship, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is History daily.

History is made every day.

On this podcast, every day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is August 8th, 1988.

Rap group NWA releases straight Outta Compton.

It's 1986 in South Central Los Angeles, over two years after the murder of Horace Grant.

22-year-old high school dropout Eric Wright sits on the edge of his bed, adding up the cash from his latest drug sale.

The bills flick through his hands with practice speed.

Eric has gotten good at counting money.

After his cousin Horace was shot and killed two years ago, Eric returned to the abandoned house they visited together.

There, Eric found several large parcels of cocaine.

Immediately, Eric hatched a plan to offload the stash to customers he got to know through his work as one of Horace's runners, and those efforts have paid off.

Eric has now established a reputation on the streets as an accomplished drug dealer, and business is good.

He's earned as much as $250,000 of pure profit, selling the cocaine he found at his dead cousin's hideout.

But despite that windfall, Eric is growing frustrated with the drug trade.

The stash from Horace is running out, forcing Eric to source drugs from other suppliers, and this is cutting into his profits.

What's worse, he knows that his success has put a target on his back.

Rival drug dealers in the area would like nothing better than to see Eric dead.

Now what once seemed like easy money has become a burden, and Eric realizes it's only a matter of time before someone tries to take him out.

So Eric is increasingly eager to leave the drug business behind.

Fortunately for him, he has another passion he wants to pursue, music.

As Eric finishes counting his pile of money, a friend stops by with a new cassette tape he thinks Eric might like.

Eric hides the cash and grabs two beers from a refrigerator, then sits back down on a couch as his friend presses play on the tape deck.

Eric is immediately drawn to the words and beats he hears coming out of the speakers.

Hip hop is in the middle of a golden age.

Back in the 1970s, the genre was most associated with the New York street scene, but in recent years it started to cross over into mainstream culture.

Acts like Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and Eric B and Rakim have helped popularize the genre and introduce it to new audiences.

For kids from south-central Los Angeles like Eric Wright, hip hop has become something of a personal soundtrack.

But this new tape is something different.

It's got a drive, a certain edge.

Eric wants to know more about the artists behind it, and his friend tells him that the tape is by Andre Young, a 21-year-old local DJ better known by his stage name, Dr.

Dre.

Impressed, Eric asks his friend to set up a meeting.

He's got an idea he wants to share with Dr.

Dre.

Eric has himself long dreamed of putting the money he's made dealing drugs into music.

He's decided he wants to open a record store, and if he can get hold of tracks by up-and-coming stars of the hip hop world first, then he'll give his planned store an edge.

He's hoping that his meeting with Dr.

Dre will be the start of a profitable collaboration.

And it is, but not in the way Eric expected.

Almost as soon as he's face to face with Dr.

Dre, Eric abandons his idea of a record store.

Dr.

Dre convinces him that a better bet would be to start his own record label.

The hip hop scene in Los Angeles is growing fast, with new acts looking for help to get their music out to consumers.

Dr.

Dre tells Eric that if he signs up these musicians, he can control the distribution rights for their tracks, creating much wider opportunities to generate revenue.

Eric takes Dr.

Dre's advice.

He leaves drug dealing behind and launches his new record label from his parents' garage.

At first, he plans to call his new company Rock House Records, a name he takes from the street slang for a dope house.

But on the advice of a friend, he decides it's best not to reference his past so directly.

He calls his label instead Ruthless Records, which he believes still perfectly conveys his style and attitude.

So now, as the owner of a new record label, Eric hopes he can find fresh and exciting hip-hop acts he can profit from.

And within a few short years, Eric Wright will be an integral part of one of those acts and build his own legacy as an American hip-hop legend.

It's 1987 at the offices of McCollough Records, a record distributor in Los Angeles.

Music manager Jerry Heller sits in the lobby waiting for a meeting with an aspiring musician.

The young man calls himself Easy E, and he's agreed to pay Jerry $750 for his time in the hopes that Jerry can help him get his big break.

Easy E has come to the right man.

Jerry is 46 years old and has over two decades of experience in the music business.

He's previously worked with a wide range of acts, including Marvin Gaye and Van Morrison.

Now though, he's shifted his attention to the emerging hip hop scene in Los Angeles, believing it's poised for tremendous growth.

A Suzuki samurai pulls up in front of the building and Jerry goes outside to greet his visitor.

Easy E, or Eric Wright as his friends know him, is a young man wearing an Oakland raiders cap and dark sunglasses.

He introduces himself and tells Jerry that he's a former drug dealer who's starting his own record label.

Eric then pulls out a wad of cash and hands it to Jerry, telling him he wants to play him the first single he hopes to release on his label, a rap song called Boys in the Hood.

The track began its life earlier that year as a songwriting project between Eric, Dr.

Dre and some of Dre's existing collaborators, including a young rapper named Ice Cube.

Together, they completed the song and invited an established rap group from New York to record it.

When this group arrived at the studio, though, they heard an instrumental version of the song, read the lyrics and decided it wasn't for them.

They walked out of the session, leaving the songwriting team to pick up the pieces.

Not wanting to waste the money they'd spent on booking the studio, Dr.

Dre encouraged Eric to rap the song instead.

In that moment, Eric's new persona, Easy E, was born and his collaborators were impressed by the performance.

Eric was a natural, but he was still a newcomer to the professional music industry.

He knew that if Boys in the Hood was to become a hit, he'd need help, and that's why he got in touch with Jerry Heller.

When Jerry listens to Eric's track at McCollough Records, he's impressed.

The song has a pulsing sense of urgency and speaks to social issues affecting many African-American communities in the late 80s.

Over a beat crafted by Dr.

Dre, Easy E raps about drugs, violence, grand theft auto, and attempted murder, inviting the listener on a journey into the world as he knows it.

Jerry becomes convinced there's money to be made with this song and its new style of gangsta rap.

So Jerry and Eric spend the rest of the day together hatching a plan for both of them to manage ruthless records and bring gangsta rap to the masses.

The first order of business is to release Boys in the Hood as a single.

They quickly get to work printing the song on 12-inch vinyl, and Eric sets out marketing the single around town.

It becomes a local hit in Los Angeles, and Eric knows exactly what he wants to do next.

He and Dr.

Dre have discussed the idea of forming a rap group in the past.

There are already a number of commercially successful rap groups floating around the airwaves, but Eric and Dre want to be the first to do it in their unique style.

So Eric and Dre first recruit Ice Cube and local musician Arabian Prince.

Later, they add DJ Yella and MC Ren to round out the group.

Then they get together to discuss potential names.

All agree they want something that will reflect who they are and where they come from.

Eric suggests they call them NWA, a twist on a racist expletive that will reflect the band's unapologetic identity and their sense of righteous indignation.

Armed with this new name, a clear vision, and the profits from the Boys in the Hoods sing, this new group books time at a local recording studio.

There, they will begin work on their debut album, but the process will test and resolve as well as their creativity.

Because before they can release their seminal album to the world, Eric and the other young men of NWA will come face to face with some of the very social issues they've been writing about.

It's August 8th, 1988, at a recording studio in Torrance, California.

Eric Wright, also known as Easy E, and Andre Dr.

Dre Young sit in front of a mixing board.

It's the same one they've used for the past few weeks to put the finishing touches on the debut album from their rap super group, NWA.

Just like them, the album is straight Outta Compton, and its release is set for today.

But the recording process has not been easy.

Egos have clashed, and the rappers have been subjected to a racially motivated shakedown right outside the studio by the Los Angeles Police Department.

But Eric and Dr.

Dre remain hopeful that the hard work they poured into this album will catapult NWA into the mainstream.

Finally, the call they've been waiting for comes in from their manager.

He informs them that copies of straight Outta Compton are flying off the shelves.

Its new style features exaggerated descriptions of street life, militant resistance to authority, and outright sexist violence.

Those traits will endear NWA to its fans, but also make the group a subject of criticism.

After the album's release, an FBI agent sends a warning letter to Ruthless Records about the violent content of the lyrics.

Radio stations refuse to play NWA songs, MTV won't air the group's videos, and some venues ban them from performing entirely.

Despite this backlash, though, N.W.A.'s debut album is a resounding success.

In 1989, the album peaked at number nine on Billboard's Top R&B Hip Hop Albums Chart, and at number 37 on the Billboard 200.

In total, straight Outta Compton sells over a million copies and becomes the first gangsta rap album to be certified platinum.

And this success helps shift rap music away from traditional hip hop to a more hardcore style that will remain popular well into the next century.

For Eric Wright, the success of his group and record label will offer him the kind of wealth and fame he could only once dream about.

Unfortunately, his time to enjoy this newfound status will be short.

In 1995, he will succumb to complications from AIDS and die at the age of 30.

But his impact on the history of rap and hip hop will be undeniable.

Eazy-E transformed the genre, and every day, new fans discover the music of this former drug dealer, a young man who made it big when he and his bandmates in NWA released straight Outta Compton on August 8, 1988.

Next, on History daily, August 9th, 2006, the biggest surveillance operation in British history prevents terrorists from blowing up seven transatlantic planes.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History daily.

Hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Gabriel Gould.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Throne.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Weiss.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers of William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.