How N.W.A 's Powerful Hip Hop Changed The Genre Forever

The group embarked on a US tour to promote the record and made the most of their newfound success, particularly Eazy. As co-owner of the record label and with a platinum-selling solo album, 'Eazy-Duz-It' under his belt, he fully embraced the playboy lifestyle, taking full advantage of the women that were throwing themselves at him. Calling himself a 'Thrillseeker' due to his predilection for unprotected sex, Eazy was known to have slept with up to ten women a day.

Although their antics were pretty much standard for a group of guys with easy access to money, alcohol and women, they were targeted by the police on numerous occasions, seemingly in revenge for the public mauling they'd received in 'Fuck Tha Police'. "The police harassed us a lot, especially on tour," Cube recalls. "They'd constantly pull us over, read the city ordinances, obscenity laws of what we could and couldn't say and tell us if we didn't comply we were going to jail. There were incidents all over the country."

As 'Straight Outta Compton' hit sales of a million copies, the group began to question the whereabouts of their earnings. When Jerry Heller presented them with cheques of $72,000 on the condition they sign binding contracts to Ruthless Records, Ice Cube refused, feeling that they were due much more. A heated exchange followed, and he left the group with nothing, suspecting shady dealings on Eazy and Heller's part.

The acrimonious split sparked a bitter rivalry with barbs traded back and forth in diss tracks with Ice Cube the subject of pure vitriol by his former bandmates throughout their next EP '100 Miles And Runnin' and next album 'Efil4Zaggin' (Niggaz4Life spelled backwards).

The album pushed themes of violence and misogyny even further and, once again, proved that their controversy was currency, shooting straight to No 1 on the Billboard chart. While N.W.A received no airplay due to their explicit lyrics, their media profile had never been higher. But the LA riots, sparked by the acquittal of four policemen who were filmed beating Rodney King in 1992, led many to re-evaluate N.W.A's message.

However, as their success grew, so did tensions within the group and Dr Dre was next to leave, again in a dispute over royalties. Though he wanted to quit the group, he was contractually obliged to stay and Eazy refused to release him from his contract – until he received a visit from Dre's new business partner, Marion 'Suge' Knight, a former bodyguard with a reputation for getting his own way.

In April 1991, Suge, surrounded by heavies carrying lead piping, confronted Eazy in a studio, saying that they were holding Jerry Heller hostage and would kill him if he did not sign a release on Dre's contract. Concerned for Heller's safety, Eazy complied, freeing Dre to form Death Row Records with Knight.

With N.W.A effectively over, Eazy moved into launching the careers of new acts on the Ruthless Records roster such as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, while Dr Dre would re-define hip hop with his debut album 'The Chronic'. After everything that N.W.A had had thrown at them, the biggest bombshell of all came at the end of 1994 when a seriously ill Eazy was rushed to hospital and diagnosed with AIDS. He released a statement on March 16 1995 disclosing his condition, urging fans to learn from his diagnosis, practise safe sex and get tested. He died 10 days later on March 26 1995, aged just 31 years old.

"I couldn't believe it when he got sick," Ice Cube recalls. "We had made our peace a few months earlier at the Tunnel nightclub in New York. We hadn't seen each other and didn't know if there was gonna be beef, but as soon as we sat down and talked we were family again and all hatchets were buried. We didn't talk about contracts or anything like that, it was just two friends catching up who had missed each other."

Following the death of Eazy-E, the other former members of N.W.A pursued their own career paths. In 1996, Dre abruptly left Death Row Records after learning (somewhat belatedly) that Knight was corrupt, financially dishonest and out of control. In Straight Outta Compton, Dre finds Knight intimidating a semi-naked executive with a pitbull. "It happened," Dr Dre told The Hollywood Reporter recently. "I was like, 'What the fuck is going on?' I was ready to leave anyways. This was the extra push. All this shit actually happened."

The bad blood with Suge Knight continues, as does Knight's alleged 25-year reign of terror using heavy-handed tactics and intimidation methods to further his business affairs. He is currently awaiting sentencing in on charges of murder and attempted murder after ploughing his car into two advisers working on a trailer for the Straight Outta Compton film, one of whom, Terry Carter, co-founder of Heavyweight Records, died.

The film has come along at a time when the black experience in the US is once again under the spotlight. "It's always been the way with poor people, with black people", says Cube of the death of Sandra Bland, a black woman found dead in a Texas police cell earlier this year, shortly after her arrest for a traffic violation. "It hasn't changed. We're talking about something that has been constant – we're just catching more and more stuff on video nowadays. 'Fuck Tha Police' was relevant then, and it's relevant now. We were tired of what was going on and we wanted to do something about it. We changed pop culture in a lot of ways. It allowed artists to be themselves. If you wanted to be raw, a little risqué, you could be. We proved that you don't have to pretend to be squeaky-clean to get on TV."

Straight Outta Compton is out now