NWA Interview: By Frank Andrich

Rap - which arguably began ten years ago [this interview is from 1990--ed.], mostly in New York's poorer areas of the Bronx, Brooklyn and the lower eastside of Manhattan - has in that time grown into a multi-level, multi-million-dollar industry.

Still, it was only four years ago that the internationally-known and influential MTV Music Network was still defending its policy of not airing black artists to the American public because it claimed that research conducted on their viewer demographics showed that the affluent white viewers that advertisers were courting were "not interested" in hearing black music or seeing black artists at home on their TV screens.

And today, those same researchers who told us so recently that we'd never accept this style of music are telling us that rap and heavy metal (also proclaimed "dead" a few short years ago), are equally popular among the average American teenager.

Even the infamous hard rappers Public Enemy sell in the millions, regardless of the fact that their message is not of the kind that conservative radio and politics take to heart - or to the airwaves. Their most recent single, "Fight The Power," released in the wake of the flap over alleged racist/anti-Semitic comments, also appears in the new Spike Lee movie, Do The Right Thing.

All the members of N.W.A. - Ice-Cube, Ren, Eazy-E, Dr Dre, and Yella - write music and/or lyrics and produce the songs found on Ruthless vinyl, tape and CD under the banner of N.W.A. Songs with titles such as "Panic Zone," "Dopeman," "A Bitch Is a Bitch," "Gangsta Gangsta," and "Fuck the Police" tell it like it is, sporting a rhythm backed by a beat so strong that it matches the band's explicitly realistic lyrical stance.

I once knew a bitch who got slapped
'Cuz she blamed me like she was all wacked.
A bitch can be your best friend and talk behind your back
About who's fuckin' who, and who's gettin' fat.
Look at yourself for me:
Do you fall in this category?
'Cuz the niggers I hang with ain't rich!
We all just say 'Fuck you, bitch!

As Ice Cube puts it, "It's all about five brothers from the streets of Compton, tellin' it like it is. No shorts. We're just tellin' it exactly how it is, like a newspaper reporter. We don't water it down. It's like, if you saw somebody get shot, there's no one there to say this person got shot: 'Oh, you're not supposed to say that; that's a bad thing to do.' No...you just say what's goin' on. That's the same thing we do with our mouth, to the people. For the people who don't see or don't know, we become the vehicle to introduce it."

M.C. REN:It's a strong video; it scares people. See, people who get scared are scared of the truth; they were scared of it 'cause it's so real. It tells the truth about how the police harass innocent people all the time in gang sweeps of Los Angeles. They don't want to see that, you know. They think the crowd is ready for all this devil worship and all that kinda shit, but they are not ready for something that's real to life, the real shit.

ICE CUBE:These people whose kids listen to Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy, or watch Rambo or The Terminator, or anything where you're watching, to see people killed - somehow these people don't want nobody to listen to N.W.A. and Eazy-E. It's like they think violence just started when we made our records. But, you know, violence has been here forever, and it's gonna stay here till the end of the world, so everybody should just wake up.

EAZY-E:In fact, violence is a sure bet on what's gonna end this world, you understand what I'm saying?

M.C. REN:Try and listen to the record and be aware. It's real, you know, you can't escape it. There's nothin' that's real that you can escape - otherwise, people wouldn't be putting so much fuss over the record, if you could escape reality. Wherever you go, reality is there to set you straight. There's no Utopia nowhere, you know.

Q:Eazy, on your solo record, the song "We Want Eazy" credits Bootsy Collins and George Clinton with the music. How did that come about?

M.C. REN:Bootsy's real cool with us, real cool. He comes out to our shows.

ICE CUBE:That's how it should be. When rappers first came out, they couldn't buy drums, they couldn't go buy guitars, stuff like that, you know. They had to do it off other people's music. It's good when the people who really did the music that we stole from...it's good when they get to really do some new music, you know what I mean?

EAZY-E:Yeah, it's not like Run-DMC and Aerosmith.

M.C. REN:It's not like we did it to keep Bootsy alive, you know, we just did it and talked to Bootsy and he was cool about it.

Q:What's the most often asked question N.W.A. gets hit with, that you hate to get hit with?

M.C. REN:"Are you guys as tough as you say you are on the record?"

ICE CUBE:"Are you guys sponsored by any gangs?" (laughs) I mean, that's gotta be the stupidest question!!

EAZY-E:This is the one: "Why do you call all girls 'bitches'?"

ICE CUBE:We don't call all girls bitches! Some girls are bitches and some girls are not. If you're not a bitch, we're not talkin' to you! You can't tell me you never knew a girl that wasn't a bitch! Plain and simple, some girls are, but, hey, some guys are dicks. We all see that every day.

EAZY-E:This is the one: "Why do you call all girls 'bitches'?"

ICE CUBE:The thing that we learned most in the industry, the bigger you get, the more kiss-asses you meet. When we broke out, we just had our 12-inch out and we went out and did spot dates. We got treated like this and that, mostly like shit. Now, we're platinum and they treat us like kings or something, you know. We just look past the kiss-ass people; they weren't really with us at first, they're just there for the business.

Q:How does N.W.A. actually put a song together?

Ice Cube
graphics effects © Joy Williams

ICE CUBE:Look, now here's how we break down a song: [Dr.] Dre and Yella do a beat.... Alright, then, and I say "Yo, man, I got a verse for that." Then up comes Eazy and he has a verse. Then we do our little tricks on the break. So we put all these things together and we got a record. Like on "Fuck The Police," everybody did their own little flavor. Eazy-E wrote his part, Ren wrote his, we all use our own perspective on the subject of fuck the police.

ICE CUBE:Instead of sitting down together and working things out and having somebody say, "Naw, man, I don't think you should write that," you know what I'm saying? What I'm saying is, this man think. Let him write what he thinks. Let me write what I think. So we never really criticize each other's record.

Q:Is the road a good place to write from, or do you wait until you get home to write?

ICE CUBE:On the road, you don't see nothin' but hotels, halls and the road.

Q:Every Ruthless Record release credits Eazy-E as the executive producer. In label-ese that usually means the guy with the bucks. So it's Executive Eazy-E Sir, or does "E" stand for Executive?

EAZY-E:I was a businessman and a superhero. I want to go through it like this, I'm the executive producer.

ICE CUBE:Let's do our own thing, man. Let's do somethin' like Gangster Style Underground, alright?

Q:What about influences from the past?

M.C. REN, EAZY-E and ICE CUBE:Parliament Funkadelic.

ICE CUBE:Cameo.

M.C. REN:Al Capone!

EAZY-E:Son of Sam!

M.C. REN and EAZY-E:Charles Manson!

EAZY-E:Ted Bundy, Ricardo Ramirez!

M.C. REN:Jim Jones.

ICE CUBE:Mine was my brother. He was an influence when I was trying to grow up. Now my brother's trying to be like me! One last thing I'd like to say: We're our own group, our own people. We like people who are their own people, that are themselves. That's what gives us, anybody, the right to demand respect. That's what we're after, respect - respect for what we do, what we've done, and who we are. We give respect, we meet you halfway, and that's cool.