Eazy-E was the the leader of the gangsta rap group NWA, which also featured Dr. Dre, MC Ren and Ice Cube. That group shocked the world by insulting police, rapping tales of violence, and its explicit sexual tales.
Eazy-E's talent was his ability to make us laugh at stuff we know we shouldn't laugh at. I mean, not everyone can do that! I mean, many of us say inappropriate things as youth in an attempt to be funny, but in many cases, even our friends aren't laughing with our jokes. This is something not every could do, but Eazy-E was good at that. Even if others wrote his lyrics, his delivery made it humorous. While Ludacris also had that talent, Eazy-E had more psycho lyrics!
1) While many stereotype rap music as "all about being a gangsta, talking about bi-----s and h--s", it wasn't anything like that before NWA came on the scene. Hip-Hop was mostly party music. House parties, block parties!
After NWA, many gang-affiliated youth and the wannabees found that making their own gangsta rap records is a legal way for them to make money without conforming to the standards of the corporate world!
Some blame "white-run corporations" for promoting gangsta rap! But in reality, most big music corporations wanted NOTHING to do with gangsta rap in the beginning. Eazy-E's business partner Jerry Heller was trying to get major labels to invest in his music. Their reaction was "nobody would listen to that garbage."
Remember, this was the 1980s, when Micheal Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper and Lionel Richie were the major stars! Rap was just coming out, and everyone thought it was another fad.
So, NWA ending up selling tons of records WITHOUT much video or radio airplay. And remember, this was before the Internet became popular! But once someone heard it, they ain't going to keep it a secret from their friends. That, plus the controversy over "f---- the police" made people want to buy NWA records.
And it wasn't limited to African-American kids. European-Americans, Mexicans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders got into it! And other people as well!
This underground popularity got the music corporations thinking "maybe people want to listen to that after all". Soon, nearly every major music corporation had a gangsta rap group signed in!
Some claim those records label caused gangsta rap to overshadow positive rap! But even when Will Smith, Black Eyed Peas and other positive groups had major airplay, most hard-core young males rather be Eazy-E, 2pac, Snoop Dogg, Master P,Lil Jon or 50 Cent.
When you're a young male, you want to be seen as tough guy not to be messed with! You also want to have sexy women on your side. You also want to drive a car with loud stereos. No other music can express those desires like gangsta rap! One can complain about corporations pushing gangsta rap, but those kids aren't going to satisfied with other corporate approved trends like teen pop, pop-punk, or R&B. While heavy metal has its tough side, it rarely expresses the desire to be the life of the party, the stud, the pimp, so that's why it got overshadowed by gangsta rap!
2) Unlike what Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Maglalang Malkin and all these other fear-mongers want you to believe, gangsta rap doesn't have the level of influence like it did when Eazy-E was around.
I mean, the last major gangsta rapper from the West Coast was TheGame, who is a couple years older than me! For the East Coast, it would be 50 Cent. For the South, it would be a tie between several rappers, since the South had much more influence in this century than the previous century.
Rappers are still talking about weed, parties, alcohol, sex and b*****, but the rappers who are selling are not making the violent music like they used to
This trend was noted in a LA Times article 2 years ago titled "In hip-hop, violence is taking on a diminishing role"
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/15/entertainment/la-et-ms-music-and-violence-rap-hip-hop-20130217
To say that hip-hop has evolved over the last 25 years — since the days when rappers such as Ice-T and Ice Cube were terrorizing the likes of Tipper Gore, who famously lobbied for the adoption of the Parental Advisory sticker — seems an almost-laughable understatement, equal to saying that the Internet has had some effect on the way we consume music. Once perceived as a site of uncut nihilism, hip-hop has made room, in a way that outsiders can't ignore, for practicality and ambivalence and staunchly middle-aged concerns. Achievement too.And it's become more peaceful, at least on the surface. At a moment in which the depiction of violence in other forms of media appears increasingly graphic, much of the conflict in hip-hop has moved inward, its players fighting battles of ideas and emotions.
I mean,yeah, we got teen pop singers (ie Chris Brown, Justin Bieber) and prison guards (ie Rick Ross) pretending to be gangsta, but that's only because the OGs in Gangsta Rap have moved on! And even then, the only thing Chris Brown and Justin Bieber can brag about is fighting weaker pop stars, driving fast cars and throwing eggs! They would get laughed at (and confronted) if they even dare pretend to do drive-by shootings or claim a real set! Rick Ross learned that when confronted by the Black Gangster Disciples while on tour!
But yeah, most of the rappers on the radio are more about parties in the clubs instead of crowding the streets and doing drive-bys!
Hip-Hop has moved on!
3) Where was I when Eazy-E was around? Back in 1991, when I was in 5th grade, my older brother Ramiro introduced me to NWA! At the time, the only rappers I really knew about were the pop rappers like Hammer!
So hearing rap music making the same dirty jokes my school peers were making was eye-opening!
Ramiro told me not to mention his NWA tapes to anyone. But my big mouth mentioned it where my oldest brother Frank (more of a classical music guy) heard it and he told my mom, and she wasn't happy!
A few years later, in 1993, MTV finally played more gangsta rap videos, especially from former NWA member Dr Dre and his new sidekick Snoop Dogg! Dr Dre & Snoop Dogg dissed Eazy-E on the "Dre Day" video. But MTV hardly played Eazy-E response track "Real M----F----n G's" and I thought it was unfair that MTV was taking sides. But I heard that Eazy-E's track from car stereos way more often than " Dre Day"
In 1994, Eazy-E introduced the Cleveland rap group Bone Thugs N Harmony! That group combined gangsta lyrics with R&B styled harmonies! That group was MEGA-POPULAR in Hawaii! While all groups listened to it, the most devoted fans tend to be Samoans. That might surprise many in Cleveland, where the only exposure many have to Samoans is NFL games and WWE. That shows even the most hardcore music can transcend cultural lines.Then during Spring Break 1995, on a middle-school sponsored field trip to the Volcanoes National Park on Hawaii's Big Island, me & a few other male students were riding in a van. One of my peers suggested playing one of his CDs. That CD was the same Eazy-E CD my brother had. The chaperone told that student to play a few cents per swear word being played!
Then when I returned to Oahu, guess what? I found out Eazy-E died from AIDS. Interesting coincidence. Remember back then, it was a few years before the Internet became popular.. No facebook, no Twitter, no smartphones. We didn't even have text messages on cell phones back then. So we were isolated from the world during that field trip.
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In Eazy-E's "Last Werds", it was claimed that 1999 will be the end of the world. Bone Thugs N Harmony sang about "East 1999". Unfortunately, Eazy-E didn't get to even see 1999, as he died too early.
But the world has not ended yet!
(note: some paragraphs were from a blog post http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2010/03/eazy-e-15-years-later.html from 5 years ago, with a few more added in to make this post more relevant to today)
