Then he decided to call back some kids from Cleveland who had been hounding his assistant.ĭesperation brought Eazy-E to Bone. Eazy’s plans to build a Ruthless empire to rival Death Row looked like a long shot at best.
(short for “Hoez With Attitude”) and Menajahtwa (pronounced ménage à trois, of course) the unapologetically Jewish group Blood of Abraham another group named Atban Klann, led by rapper-producer Will 1X, who would later rise to fame as will.i.am.īut Atban Klann never released an album, and none of the other new groups sold more than 40,000 units on their first go-round. Others were from upstarts that Eazy latched on to: two raunchy all-female acts, H.W.A. Some were from Ruthless mainstays Above the Law and MC Ren. At one point, Heller recalled, Ruthless worked on 29 different albums at the same time.
After Dre’s solo career blew up-and after he proved it was no fluke by producing Snoop Dogg’s four-times-platinum Doggystyle in 1993-Eazy abandoned that rule. In the early days of Heller and Eazy’s partnership, they had instituted a policy of working on only one release at a time. In his memoir, Ruthless, Jerry Heller said Eazy had become consumed with the idea of besting Dre and Cube. “I’m thinking he was trying to mask how he was feeling deserted and embarrassed,” his onetime assistant, Charis Henry, told Ben Westhoff in the 2016 book Original Gangstas.Ī look back at the most important moments from one of the most important years in hip-hop history. Some closest to him thought his newfound habits were a direct result of his inability to keep pace with his former cohorts. Eazy, who had famously avoided alcohol and drugs to remain sharp during his early days as a hustler, began getting high and drinking Jack Daniel’s. Eazy fired back with a scathing diss song of his own and called Dre a “studio gangster” during a visit to The Arsenio Hall Show, but no matter how cool he seemed while wearing his trademark Compton hat and sunglasses, he was clearly rattled by the feud. Eazy’s former partners were lapping him, and laughing in his face while doing it- The Chronic single “Fuck Wit Dre Day” took several thinly veiled shots at Eazy and Heller, while its music video left no room for confusion. Dre, meanwhile, would redefine hip-hop again in 1992 when he released The Chronic. The former, who had left N.W.A by 1990 after alleging financial impropriety by Heller, had established himself not only as a superstar solo rapper, but as a burgeoning Hollywood talent after his breakout role in Boyz n the Hood (which coincidentally shared a name with Eazy’s biggest solo hit). But one thing gnawed at Eric Wright: He had yet to find a way to match the heights N.W.A reached, commercially or culturally. He appeared happy: He was wealthy, he loved skateboarding, he had girlfriends. He’d dined with the president-perhaps as an unwelcome guest-and he’d started a film production company. He’d put out several successful solo projects on Ruthless Records, the label he founded alongside Jerry Heller just a few years earlier. N.W.A, the group he cofounded and masterminded in the late 1980s, had redefined hip-hop and brought gangsta rap mainstream. Today, we’re celebrating this history of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and the biggest rap song of that year or virtually any other: “Tha Crossroads,” released in early 1996.īy 1993, Eazy-E had achieved things most rappers only dream of.
#ILL MEET YOU AT THE CROSSROADS SONG SERIES#
The 1996 Rap Yearbook, a recurring series from The Ringer, will explore the landmark releases and moments from a quarter-century ago that redefined how we think of the genre. No year in hip-hop history sticks out quite like 1996: It marked the height of the East Coast–West Coast feud, the debut of several artists who would rule the next few decades, and the last moment before battle lines between “mainstream” and “underground” were fully drawn.