N.W.A

N.W.A — Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, MC Ren and DJ Yella — formed in Compton in 1986, produced and managed through Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records and guided by the commercial instincts of manager Jerry Heller. Their debut Straight Outta Compton (1988), distributed by Priority Records with virtually no radio play and no MTV support, sold three million copies through word of mouth and a banned music video — becoming the founding document of West Coast gangsta rap.

The album’s title track announced the aesthetic: first-person accounts of gang life, police violence and street economics in South Central Los Angeles, delivered in explicit language from a perspective that mainstream media had never given platform. The FBI sent a letter to Priority Records expressing concern about “Fuck tha Police”; the PMRC added N.W.A to their watch list. The controversy amplified the album’s reach.

Ice Cube left in 1989 over royalty disputes, went to New York and made AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted (1990) with Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad, establishing himself as a solo force. Dr. Dre’s subsequent departure and the founding of Death Row Records with Suge Knight led to The Chronic (1992) and the West Coast’s commercial dominance through the 1990s. Eazy-E died of AIDS in March 1995, six weeks after his diagnosis.