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Eazy-E was born in Compton, California to Richard Wright and Kathie Lolis. As a teen, he was bussed from South Central Los Angeles to Taft High School in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles. He was a schoolmate of fellow hip hop musician and future N.W.A. crewmate O'Shea Jackson a.k.a. Ice Cube. During those years, he was a Kelly Park Compton Crip and began selling drugs such as crack cocaine. Following this period, his grandmother died and he used some of his inheritance, along with proceeds from drug sales, to start Ruthless Records with his business partner and manager Jerry Heller. He recruited Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, DJ Yella, The D.O.C. and Arabian Prince to form the group N.W.A.(Niggaz With Attitude): the first act signed to the label.
When N.W.A. was first started, Eazy-E never planned on rapping in any songs; he was set to provide the money, not the talent. After hearing Eazy rap, however, the other N.W.A. members liked his distinct, almost child-like voice and Ice Cube gave some lyrics he had already written (for the song "Boyz-N-The-Hood") to Eazy for him to rap.
Eazy-E's first solo album, Eazy-Duz-It, went double-platinum, selling 2.7 million copies. This album had three hit singles: "We Want Eazy," "Eazy-Er Said Than Dunn," and "Boyz-N-The-Hood." Fellow N.W.A. rappers Ice Cube and MC Ren and the group's ghostwriter D.O.C. wrote the lyrics for Eazy's first songs.
Eazy-E's creative vision was not always shared by his fellow N.W.A. members. Dr. Dre was especially critical of the direction Eazy-E was leading the group[citation needed]. Eazy-E wanted to portray a rough, realistic image using stark production and minimal beats; Dre preferred to incorporate more mainstream elements into his production.
The subsequent period saw the release of several EPs as both group and Eazy-E solo efforts, plus a side project from The D.O.C. On the final N.W.A. album, Efil4zaggin (1991), some of the lyrics provoked outrage from many critics and conservative circles, but this served to increase the group's audience. Eazy-E included even more of the elements which Dr. Dre considered cartoonish, such as the use of pistols and shotguns in videos for Always into Somethin' and Appetite for Destruction.
These differences of opinion led to a rocky relationship; a break-up ensued when it was revealed that Eazy and Jerry Heller were stealing money from the group, as Ice Cube had previously discovered, causing him to leave N.W.A. Subsequently a feud erupted between Eazy and Dre which grew to embroil most of Ruthless Records and Dre's new label, Death Row Records.
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