Eazy-E

When Eric "Eazy-E" Wright, a drug dealer-turned-aspiring music mogul, had begun scouting talent at Eve's After Dark, a nightclub in South Central, he had no intention of ever being a rap star. All he wanted to do was put out some music, make a little money, and get out of the narco-biz once and for all. To do so, he recruited Andre "Dr. Dre" Young, a DJ known as much for his membership in The World Class Wreckin' Cru as for his appearances on all-rap radio station KDAY, who'd started dabbling in production along with Wreckin' Cru bandmate and Eve's After Dark proprietor Alonzo "Lonzo" Willams. He also lined up one of Dre's friends, a younger kid from the same neighborhood born O'Shea Jackson but calling himself Ice Cube, who'd been tearing down the house with explicit tales of his sexual conquests. Eazy hired them to write and produce music for a group of expatriated East Coasters he'd recently signed, but when the group reneged dismissing Cube's rhyme as "some West Coast shit," Dre convinced a reluctant Eazy to record it himself, since Cube had gone on to college in Arizona not long after penning the song. Released in 1987, the first track, "Boyz-N-The Hood," and its subsequent album, but it was Eazy's next project that forever altered the course of Hip Hop history.