While recording his follow-up LP in 1995, Eazy-E passed away suddenly from AIDS-induced pneumonia, a month following his diagnosis. Dre): 187um Killa, a virulent G-funk retaliation, peaking with the explosive “Real Muthaphuckkin G's” aimed at Dre. The feud would reach its apogee on Eazy-E’s 1993 EP, It's On (Dr. Capitalizing on the controversy, Eazy-E released his debut album, the seminal Eazy-Duz-It, remixing the hardcore, wry storytelling of “Boyz-N-The-Hood” and producing hulking narrative bangers like “Nobody Move.” Ushering in gangsta-funk in 1991 with the burnished reality rap spectacle Efil4zaggin, that album would be N.W.A.’s last, due to a falling-out between Eazy E and Dr. The ungovernable, funk-injected recital of street life, which culminated with the anti-police anthem “F**k tha Police,” thrust the group’s charismatic figurehead to the forefront of rap. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella to form N.W.A., which erupted into mainstream America with gangsta rap’s definitive album Straight Outta Compton in 1988. Debuting his distinctive high-pitched timbre in 1987 with the stentorian, day-in-the-life anthem “Boyz-n-the-Hood,” he joined with Dr. Born Eric Wright in 1964 in Compton, California, Eazy-E founded Ruthless Records in 1986 with capital earned from drug dealing. A pioneer of gangsta rap and founder of the infamous West Coast group N.W.A., Eazy-E’s entrepreneurial guile and radical rhymes redefined the extremities of hip-hop in the late 1980s.

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