Latest / DISGRACELAND / Eazy-E: A Hidden Coke Stash, Domestic Terrorists, and Death Threats

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Eazy-E: A Hidden Coke Stash, Domestic Terrorists, and Death Threats · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Eaze are insane. He looked into life as a Compton
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: drug dealer when he discovered a dead man's hidden stash
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of money in cocaine. He was on the kill list
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: of a white supremacist group that planned to start a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: racial holy war in the aftermath of the Rodney King
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: trial in the La Riots. According to the FBI, he
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: was extorted by a right wing extremist group that offered
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: their arm protection following alleged death threats. The trials and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: tribulations of Easy's life, both on and off the streets,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: were reflected in his music great music, paradigm shifting music
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: made with his gangster rapp supergroup n WA and as
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a solo artist. Unlike that music, I played few with
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the time of the show that wasn't great music. That
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: was a preset loop for my melotron called Disco Priscilla MK. Two.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: rights to Take a Bow by Madonna? And why would
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I play you that specific slice of bedroom story Cheese?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: song in America on March seventeenth, nineteen ninety five, and
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: that was the day that Easy announced to the world
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: that he was suffering from eight, an announcement that shocked
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the hip hop community and sent conspiracy theories into overdrive.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: On this episode, Hidden Stashes, Kill, This Extortion, Bedroom Story,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Cheese and Easy, motherfucking e I'm Jake Brennan and this
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: this Disgraceland. Eric found the money right where Horace had
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: said it would be. He reached under the abandoned house.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: His hand grabbed the paper bag. He opened it up
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and looked inside. It was all there, tightly wrapped piles
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of cash. But there was more than just money inside,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: more than Eric was expecting. There were bindles too, cocaine.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Eric didn't know what the street value would be once
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: he cooked it up into rocks and separated it into
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: smaller baggies, but he knew it was more money than
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: he'd ever seen before, ten twenty thirty grand, even for
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: a high school dropout. The math was easy. Eric knew
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: stolen cars and b and ease, but when it came
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to slinging dope, he had a lot to learn. So far,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: his only experience had been delivering drugs to buyers. After
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: they gave Horace the money. Horace Butler was Eric Wright's cousin,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: but Horace Butler no longer had use for the money
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: or the dope in that paper bag, because Horace was
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: dead shot seven times in his GMC truck in a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: traffic light. While waiting would merge onto the tent. Horace's
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: foot came off the brake pedal and his truck rolled
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: backwards and hit a utility pole, which is where they
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: found him. And now Eric had not just a wad
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: of a dead man's dough, he had the guy's entire supply,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: which meant that Eric Wright's reality was about to change.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: No more fucking around with stolen shit. He always said
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: he'd never worked for someone else. Three dollars and thirty
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: five cents an hour to mop a floor. Fuck that
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Eric Wright was going to make that money real money,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and it was going to be easy too, because what
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the hell else were you going to do? In the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: city of Compton, South central LA. In nineteen eighty five.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: In Compton, hope was fading fast. Families were being ripped
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: apart by drugs or by local gangs like the Bloods,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the Crips, and the lapd LAPD's corrupt Crash Unit, that's
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Community Resources against STREETHOODLMS didn't think twice about planting guns
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: or drugs, not just at the scene of a crime,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: but at a scene period. If you were black or
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: brown and Compton at that time, the chances that you
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: would be pulled over and unfairly harassed or unfairly arrested
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: by the police were high, as high as Compton's murder rate,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: which at the time was three times per capita that
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: of Los Angeles as a whole. Unemployment was up, jobs
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: were down. In the early eighties, President Ronald Reagan pulled
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the plug on a federal initiative to train workers and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: provide them with jobs in public service. And this was
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the exact same time that Reagan also declared a war
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: on drugs. But Eric wasn't going to be like Ronnie
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Reagan's wife Nancy and just say no to a career
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: as a drug dealer, especially when he was handed that
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: career on a silver platter, or rather in a paper
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: bag hidden underneath an abandoned house. Plus, dealing drugs was lucrative,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: so he measured out Horace's stash and started slinging rocks
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: in a neighborhood controlled by different factions of crips, and
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: he made that money. He bought nice clothes, he bought
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: nice cars. But he was successful because he played it safe.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: He sold only wholesale, and he sold only to people
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: that he knew. He was gangster, but didn't get involved
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: in the gang shit. He didn't give a fuck about
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the violence and all the bullshit that went along with it.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Some days he didn't even wear blue, with the traditional
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: color of the crips. He just wanted to get rich.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: But just because Eric steered clear the violence of the
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: streets didn't mean that he was safe from street violence.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Dealers had beef with other dealers, and the more successful
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you became, the more your competition wanted a piece of you.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: They wanted your money, they wanted your women, they wanted
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: your life. In nineteen eighty six, someone said Eric's Volkswagen
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: on fire. And when someone pulls something like that, it
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: stings your pride hurts like a motherfucker. But maybe your
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: first instinct is to keep your head down, stay out
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: of the violence and bullshit like you have all along,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and just keep making that money. What does it say
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: about you if you do let it slide. It doesn't
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: say you're a neutral Switzerland motherfucker. It says you're a
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: fucking pussy, a punk ass bitch. So you only have
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: one option. You hit back. Eric had the guy's car
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: burned in retaliation, and suddenly he was in it. Business
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: wasn't just business anymore. Business was protecting yourself and protecting
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: your shit. Eric sold the remainder of Horace's stash, and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: now he was buying his coke from other suppliers, which
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: took him deeper into the network of Compton dealers, deeper
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: into the fucked up game that was Compton street life.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: It was a life of allegiances and territories and backstabbings,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: a life of survival, and sometimes one man survival meant
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: that another man had to die. Eric knew all it
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: took was one crazy motherfucker with a gun for his
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: life to end, and then some young hustler would take
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Eric's place, just like he had taken the place of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: his dead cousin. So like any good businessman who examines risk,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: who monitors the volatility in the market, and who is
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: wary of increased competition, Eric Wright, just twenty three years old,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: knew it was time to pivot. He couldn't play this
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: game forever. He needed a new game, one that wasn't
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: so dangerous. He knew exactly what that would be. It
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: was already happening all around him. It was booming out
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: of the sound system at Ease after Dark, a nightclub
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: right there, and Compton rappers like Ice Cube and his
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Crew CIA aka Criminals in Action, Well, the record label
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: made them change to Crew in Action, DJ Yella and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Doctor Dre, the world class wrecking crew fucking with your
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: ear drums. But the music needed something else. It needed authenticity,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: which Eric had a denticity mixed with the raw talents
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and the musicians Eric watched in the club every weekend,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: could create something new, something that the market wasn't expecting,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: something that reflected a reality that no one outside of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Compton knew anything about. It would bear witness to the
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: strength of street knowledge. It would take Eric Wright straight
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: out of Compton and straight into the lives of millions
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: of people all over the world. And just like dealing
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: drugs used to be, this new business venture was gonna
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: be motherfucking easy. NWA, the hip hop supergroup that shocked
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Americans and made Doctor Dre an ice cube hold names
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be the thing that helped Eric Wright
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: go legit and keep him safe, and at first it did.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: It turned him from Eric Wright, the Compton drug dealer,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: into Easy E, the group's libidinous, street tough, pint sized ringleader.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: It also turned him into a music mogul. Ruthless Records,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the label he co founded with industry veteran Jerry Heller,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: released NWA's unprecedented debut album straight out of Compton, an
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: easy solo debut Easy Does It, in nineteen eighty eight.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Both sold millions. Music made Easy E richer than the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: streets ever did. He bought more cars, he bought more
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: houses and women. If Easy thought he was swimming and
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: pussy before, he was drowning in it now. His sexual
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: appetite was never satisfied. They called him the community dick
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: because he fucked a lot. He fucked when he was
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: supposed to be doing other things, like working, and he
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: fucked because he liked to fuck. He fucked to win bets. Seriously,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: he had an ongoing competition with a friend that they
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: called baby races, where the guy who got the most
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: women pregnant was the victor. Shocker easy one. He rarely
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: used protection and slept with countless women, which led not
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: only to his fathering at least ten children, but to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: a steady stream of paternity suits. Unlike Eaze's sexual stamina, however,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: NWA wasn't built to last. Ice Cube left the group
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: first convinced he wasn't getting properly compensated. He was even
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: more convinced that Jerry Heller was a snake and was
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: fucking him over. Then Doctor Dre bounced too, with the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: help of a blood street gang affiliate, a former defensive
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: end for the Los Angeles Rams turned music mogul, Sug
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Knight brought that gangster shit to the world of gangster rap.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: If he wanted you to do something, you did it,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and if you didn't, something bad happened, which is why Eazye,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: one of the most fearless dudes in the game, signed
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: on the dotted line to release Doctor Dre from his contract.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: When Shug told him to hold up. If you're thinking,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Jake your glossing over all this, nwas well, okay, true,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I am glossing over it, but only because we already
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: released a two part episode on NWA. If you're interested
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: in learning more about the group that put West Coast
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Rap on the musical map. You can hear all about
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that in season four Disgrace Lam. Okay, now back to
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: our story about Easy. Easy took Drey's departure personally, but
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: not just as friends, as business partners. Per their original contract,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Drey still owed Ruthless More records, even if showing strong
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: armed Easy into signing some bitch ass paper that said otherwise.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Enter Jimmy Iavien, co founder of Interscope Records. Jimmy had
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: a solution. Interscope would pay Ruthless and death Row for
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the right to release Dre's solo debut album, The Chronic,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and Easy would further benefit by receiving a percenter to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the royalties. Drey used the Chronic to lob disses at Easy,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: but Easy laughed all the way to the bank. He
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: pocketed somewhere between twenty five and fifty cents per unit sold,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: and the Chronic went on to sell over three million copies.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So you knew the math. Sug did the math, and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: he didn't like the solution to that particular equation. Furthermore,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Easy knew that a guy like Suge Knight was going
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: to do what he had to do in order to
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: make things better for Dre and for anyone in the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: death Row family by any means necessary. It was the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: same bullshit Easy thought he'd left behind when he stopped
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: selling dope. He and sug may as well have been
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: letting each other's cars on fire. Once again, Easy found
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: himself playing that game of survival. But once again his
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: haters were knocking on his door, and once again he
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: didn't feel safe. And I'm not just talking about Suge Knight.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: There were plenty of people who wanted to see Easy dead.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: The twenty year old leader of the Fourth Reich Skinheads,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: a white supremacist group out of Long Beach, thought he
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: was talking to a friend of the cause. He thought
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the guy was a fellow believer in a large scale
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: racial holy war, a war that would, as the twenty
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: year old himself put it, really stir up the masses.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: But the guy he was talking to was nothing of
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the sort. The guy was unundercover Federal Asian, and he
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: listened as the leader of the Fourth Right told him everything,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: like how they tossed them all tof cocktail at a
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: synagogue in Orange County. Even though the fucking thing wouldn't explode,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and how pipe bombs were better, like the one they
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: used to blow up the car of an Asian family
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: in Lakewood. That shit went off hard. Even harder, though,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was what they planned next. They were going to bomb
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: the first African Methodist Episcopal Church, and then they were
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: going to shoot any members of the congregation who didn't
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: perish in the blast. The twenty year old leader of
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the Fourth Riike showed the agent they were capable. He
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: showed off semi automatic rifles, an arm jaeger in an SRS,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: smokeless black powder ski mass fucking bayonets. If the Fourth
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Reich had its way, the summer of nineteen ninety three
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: was going to be all kinds of fucked up. Three
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: months earlier, in April, one year after four LAPD cops
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: who were quitted of all but one of the charges
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: brought against them, and the savage beating of Rodney King,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: one year after Los Angelinos took to the streets in
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: prot in frustration and disgust and literally set the city
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: on fire. One year after a white trucker was pulled
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: from his trailer and beaten relentlessly of beating that like
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the Rodney King beating NWA and straight Out A. Compton
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: had predicted in their music. One year after all that,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: almost to the day, two of those acquitted LAPD cops
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: were convicted in federal court of violating Rodney King's civil rights.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Their sentencing was set for that summer. Tensions were once
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: again high throughout Los Angeles, and radical extremists like the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Fourth Reich Skinheads used that attention to continue to pummel
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Southern California with fear. They planned their church bombing to
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: coincide with the announcement of the cops sentencing, but they
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: never got the chance. In July nineteen ninety three, the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Bureau wrapped up its eighteen month investigation and arrested three
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the alleged fifty members of the hate group, including its
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: twenty year old leader. The Fourth Reich was flying so
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: far under the radar that many of the Southern California's
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: preeminent hate crime investigators had never even heard of them,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and their plots of violence destruction were so fucked up
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: that another hate group, the White Arean Resistance, actually issued
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: a statement to distance themselves. Imagine that a hate group
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: so despised that even other hate groups hate you. As
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: it turns out, the Fourth Reich had other plans besides
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: bombing a church. They had a list, a kill list.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: On that list were prominent male members of the black community,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Rodney King, Lewis Farakhan, Reverend Al Sharpton, and Easy, motherfucking E. Easy.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: You never got a heads up that he was on
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: any list. The FEDS didn't pick up the phone to
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: alert him that his life was in danger. You heard
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: about it the way the rest of the world did
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: in the newspaper after the arrests. And why was it Because,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: as the FEDS later explained, that the Fourth Reich so
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: called kill list was just that, a list of names
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: with no proof of an actual plot, and therefore it
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: was not considered a serious threat, or, as Easy E
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: himself suspected, did the US government simply not give a
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: fuck if he lived or died. Remember this is the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. We're talking about the
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: same organization that subjected NWA to a humiliating drug surge
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: at a show in Cincinnati, the same organization that accused
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Easy in his band of using their music and their
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: tour merely as a front to sling crack the same
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: organization that sent NWA a letter. I mean, hold up,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: that wasn't a letter. Easy wasn't fucking pent palace with
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the FBI. That was a thinly veiled threat. The FEDS
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: had wanted Easy to disappear for years if some racist
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: piece of shit arm't to the gills, wanted to hunt
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: easy E down and blow them away, while they'd just
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: be doing the US government a favor, right. I'm speaking
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: from the point of view of the FBI, of course,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: or soon Eas's thinking it didn't matter that Eze of Gomachen,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: or that he was building ruthless records into a major
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: player in the music industry that empowered not just black
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: artists but women in Latinos too. The FBI, the police,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: the media, they didn't see the other side of Eaz.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: They didn't see that he was a devoted father to
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: all of his children, that he took busloads of underprivileged
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: kids to Magic Mountain, that he gave him make a
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: wish and city of hope on the regular. Of course,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: there were two sides to Easy. There was the provider side,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the side that took care of his family and the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: others who were less fortunate, And then there was the
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: flip side, the side to prove that his violent and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: misogynistic lyrics weren't just quote unquote street talk, as he
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: once wrote them off ass and that Easy E lit
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: gophers on fire for entertainment and fired a BB gun
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: into the head of one of his many girlfriends. Complicated,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: nuanced duality going legit did not tame Easye. He remained
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: authentic to a fault for better and for worse, not
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: or for worse and for worse, a real Compton City
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: g unlike doctor Dre, who in Easy's mind was a
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: phony nothing but a studio gangster. But that didn't stop
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Dre from talking shit about E and ruthless Records like
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: they had done him wrong. Easy hit the studio. He
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: cooked up a new track. It had the laid back
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: vibe of Dre's new shit, that same high pitched ghetto whistle.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: He knew that would get und Dre's skin when he
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: heard it, and if that didn't, Easy's versus would. The
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: track was one big diss, the whole fucking song, not
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: just Dre, but all the other phony bitches he was
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: hanging with. Now, mother fuck Dre, Motherfuck's NWP, and motherfuck
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: death Row. The track titled Real Motherfucking G's or Real
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Compton City G's for the radio edit, was a hit
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: in the fall of nineteen ninety three. The EP it
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: was featured on sold over two million copies. The song
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: held Easy saved face from the humiliation and getting eaten
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: alive and a beef with his former bandmate, but it
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: didn't clear all that worry from Easy's mind and it
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: didn't help him sleep at night. We'll be right back
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: after this word word word. Although Ruthless Records continue to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: grow in the mid nineties, continued to develop a deep
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: roster of diverse talent like the Jewish rap group Blood
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: of Abraham, the female duo Manajer Twa, Latinem, se Kid Frost,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and then unknown Boone Thugs and Harmony. Easy EA's record
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: label was also in need of developing its non musical payroll.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: I'll give you three reasons why White Supremacists, the FBI,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and death Row Records. It was only a matter of
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: time before someone or something made a real threat on
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Easy's life. First came Mike Klein. Jerry Heller hired him
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: as Ruthless as security director. Klein was ex Israeli security forces,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: or so they said. No one really knew exactly where
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the guy came from, but it was clear he didn't
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: fuck around. According to a story and Vibe magazine, before
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: he relocated to La Klein led a group of commandos
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: in Lebanon to captured terrorists who had blown up a
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: bus full of children. You breathed a little easier with
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: big mikes standing next to you in the room. Ditto
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: for the three hundred pounds Samoan dudes Jacob and ja
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: On aka the twins that had one job protect easy. Allegedly,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that was the same reason Klein and Heller hired the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Jewish Defense League. The JDL state admission was to protect
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Jews from anti Semitism by any means necessary. That those
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: violent means got them labeled an extremist group by the
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Southern Poverty Law Center and domestic terrorists by the FBI.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Witnesses who visited the Ruthless office during this time recall
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: seeing quote Israeli soldiers wielding oozy machine guns, which is
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: probably not the first thing you expect to see when
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: you step foot inside a record label's headquarters. Just a
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: few years later, however, in nineteen ninety seven, the FBI
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: launched an investigation into the group that found that they
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: had actually been extorting Eze, and not just Easy, but
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: also the recently murdered Southern California hip hop star Tupac Shakur.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: The elaborate scheme involved phony death threats via a phone call,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: followed by an author of armed protection for a FTPE,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: of course, and ended with the assurance that the so
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: called threat had been a limited in one form or another.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: The FBI never filed charges. After the investigation was closed,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: a spokesman for the JDL reiterated that the organization had
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: great working relationship with the EASE. But if the FBI's
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: findings were actually true, if the JDL was running a
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: scam that had easy thinking, these days were numbered, it
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been all that hard to pull off. Just
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: look at easy state of mind at that time. He
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: was constantly looking behind his back. He was convinced that
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: people were out to get him, as if he was
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: hustling on the streets of Compton all over again. But
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: he wasn't a twenty something hustler. He was thirty years
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: old and still motherfuckers wanted his money, his women, his life.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Despite all the increased protection around him, the paranoia settled in,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: so did the sleep deprivation. Easy didn't know who to
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: trust anymore. He started to smoke weed, like a lot
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of weed, which honestly probably wasn't the greatest idea, seeing
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: that he battled bout to bronchitis since he was a kid. Paranoia,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the exhaustion, the chronic it all started to take its toll,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and it got him thinking, what the fuck was it
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: really going on with Jerry Heller. He never knew which
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: route Jerry was going to take when he went home
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: from the office each day. There was a time when
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: being in business with Jerry was good, back when he
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: leveraged his extensive career to open doors for Easy in NWA.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: But now Jerry was closing his door, tucked safely inside
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: a house with a growing gun collection and a brand
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: new security system. Meanwhile, Easy kept hearing the same shit
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: about Jerry Heller that he'd heard for years. Dude is
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: a snake, Dude iss fucking you just like you, fuck
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Cube and Dre and everyone else you think your equals
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: with Jerry Heller. Motherfucker makes you work twice as hard
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and pays you half as much for the pleasure. So
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: in February of nineteen ninety five, Jerry Heller received a
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: letter ending his partnership with EASYE and Ruthless Records. Easy
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: may have written it himself, but it would soon become
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: apparent to Jerry that it may have been written by
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: a man who wasn't all there. Damn Easy, You're going
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to freeze to death out there the Saint California. You
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: get to cover your shit up. Easy ignored the warnings
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: of the guys in Bone Thugs and Harmony and ventured
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: out into the winter night with no jacket and his
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Jerry curls still wet. He was in New York City
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to promote Bone Thugs with an appearance on MTV raps,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and the air was cold and the wind was biting,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: but Easy was tough. Besides, his crew soon found their
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: way off the street and into a warm club called
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: the Tunnel and Chelsea, where DJs spun an eclectic mix
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: of tunes across five rooms. It was there that Easy
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: ran into his former WA group member Ice Cube. There
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: was no animosity, no beef. Cube never had any beef
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: with Easy in the first place. His beef was with Jerry,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and now that Jerry was out of the picture. They
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: could talk about the future, and so the conversation between
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: ice Cube and Easy that night at the tunnel turned
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: to an unexpected but natural topic, reuniting Nwa. Cube said
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: he was down. That part was the hard part would
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: be convincing Dre, or maybe the hard part would be
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Easy working up the nerve to ask Dre, given their
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: years of standoffs and diss tracks, give me a call,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Cube said, if you can work out your feud, and
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: that was a huge fucking yif it was an if
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: that Easy didn't even get a chance to explore. He
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: returned to LA with a bad cough. Fucking New York.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Probably should have listened to his crew after all when
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: they told him the bundle up for weeks. It lingered,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: and then it got worse, so bad that Easy could
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: hardly breathe and he was in the middle of a
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: coughin fit. Then the pains in his chest started, like
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: someone at his lungs and a vice. Mike Klein did
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: what he was hired to do. He drove Easy to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the Norick Community Hospital at emergency room. Everyone doctors included,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: figured it was Easy's history with bronchitis. Maybe chronic asthma,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: or maybe it was just all that chronic period. He
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: was released to go back home, but the cough never
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: went away. On February twenty f or nineteen ninety five,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Easy went back to the hospital, this time the Cedar
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Grove. Doctors gave him antibiotics
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: to treat an infection in his lungs, but they were
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: still perplexed by what was causing the problems. They ordered
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a full panel of tests, and those tests gave them
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: an answer. But it wasn't bronchitis, and it wasn't asthma,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and it didn't have anything to do with the amount
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of weed Easy was smoking. The test showed that Easye
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: was HIV positive. It was in a matter of days
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: his condition escalated from HIV to full blown AIDS. It
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: wasn't just shocking. It was hard to believe that a
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: person who exhibited no symptoms of HIV for so long
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: suddenly found himself with full blown AIDS. That Timika Woods,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Easy's girlfriend of four years, tested negative for the virus.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: The children tested negative too, who was also hard to
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: believe because in the mid nineties, even though AIDS was
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the leading cause of death for Americans age twenty five
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: to forty four, and even though around thirty million adults
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and children worldwide had HIV, routine screening for HIV was
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: yet to be commonplace, and the stigma surrounding the virus
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: remained rooted in fear and homophobia. AIDS was still labeled
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: as a gay man's disease, even though anyone who had
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: unprotected sex was at risk. Now, after years of increasing
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: his protection in the form of bodyguards, after living in
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: fear of a clear and present danger in the form
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: of one of his rivals, it was his failure to
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: use protection during his prolific sexual conquests that actually got him.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: He never saw it coming. Easy was thirty one years old.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: He couldn't even sit up in his hospital bed. On
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: March sixteenth, nineteen ninety five, he shocked the hip hop
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: community in the world when he announced to a written
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: statement that he had contracted AIDS. Ten days after that
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: he was dead. Easy was dead, but the FBI was
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: still following him, or rather they were following a lead
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to chase down tapes tapes of Easy's unreleased music that
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Ruthless Records planned to issue and as posthumous records by
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: beloved artists often do make the label a shitload of money.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: But the tapes were gone. Two titanium suitcases of recording
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: stolen right out of the trunk of Easy's Mercedes. The
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: FEDS tracked down the thief all the way to Ontario, Canada,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: and when he was confronted, he swore he wasn't actually
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: a thief. He claimed that Easy gave him those tapes
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: before he died, and that furthermore, someone are Ruthless gave
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: him twelve five hundred dollars to set up a satellite
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: office in Canada. Whether or not that was the truth,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: it quickly became obvious that someone was attempting to undermine
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the post Easy era of Ruthless records, which was currently
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: worth around thirty million dollars. It was being overseen by
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: an unlikely person. Easy's widow, Tamika Woods, now known as
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Tamika Wood's right Easy's longtime girlfriend, though certainly not Easy's
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: only lady friend, married Easy in a small ceremony in
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: his hospital room, after which a will was drafted that
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: made Tamika an Easy's attorney co executors of his estate.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: The next morning, he was transferred to the ICU. Less
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: than two weeks later, he was gone. The rumors kicked
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: up immediately Tamika was making a brazen cash grab for
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Easy's fortune. Easy wasn't of sound mine when he signed
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: those papers and said, I do Easy, motherfucking e a husband,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: No fucking way. And then there were the allegations. Easy
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: owes me money, Easy knocked me out, Easy gave me aids.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Jerry Heller accused Tamika of not operating an Easy's best interests.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Mike Klein said Easy was forced to sign his trust
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: and his marriage certificate opinions like assholes. Tamika said in
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety eight interview, her tone echoing her late husband's.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: As far as anybody else who might be saying stuff,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I could give a damn Still, Jerry Heller sued, so
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: did Mike Klein. Tamika settled with Klein out of court.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: She countersued Jerry Heller, claiming fraud a misuse of company funds.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: She later settled for an undisclosed sum and a clause
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: that prohibited either party from talking shit. As for those
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: missing tapes of unreleased Easy music, the FBI never found them.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: No charges case closed. When it comes to the case
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: of Eas, many of his friends and family are not
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: satisfied with the narrative that he simply contracted AIDS from
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: unprotected sex. Those in doubt often point to the fact
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: that he didn't pass the virus on to his many partners,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: though there have been claims by some over the years.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: And there's also the culture of conspiracy that surrounds nineteen
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: nineties gangster rap and hip hop. Look no further than
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: a Tupac secure gone down a year after Easy died,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: or than Notorious Big who med a similar fait six
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: months after Tupac, And just like the con smpiracy theories
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: about the suspicious deaths of Tupac and Biggie, the wild
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: stories about what people think really happened to Easy continued
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: to make the rounds. Jerry Heller did it, the US
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: government did it, White supremacist did it. Acupuncture needles contaminated
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: with HIV did it. That last theory actually gained some
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: traction when in two thousand and three, after his release
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: from his latest stint in California prison, Shug Knight made
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. If You Shoot somebody
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: you go to jail forever, Shuk said, reflecting on his
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: lifestyle and his recent incarceration, before offering up his own
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: crazy take on the sign of the times. They got
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: this new thing out. People sell them all the time.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: They get blood from somebody with a's and then they
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: shoot you with it. He made a gesture like he
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: was pushing a syringe in a Kimmel's arm. It's a
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: slow death, an easy thing, and then he laughed, I'm
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Jake Brennan and this this disgrace Land. Disgraceland was created
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: by Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
• 31:18
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• 31:22
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• 31:25
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• 31:28
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• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Gray Lampard rock a roller. He's a bad, bad man.