Eazy-E

Eric Lynn Wright was born on the seventh of September 1964 at Compton, California, the son of Richard Wright, a Compton postal worker, and Kathie Wright, a school administrator. (Many obituaries recorded 1963, but his funeral program and official court records give 1964.) He came of age in a Los Angeles County community reshaped by economic decline and the rise of the Crips and Bloods; he left Compton High School before graduating and later earned a general equivalency diploma.

In 1987 Wright founded Ruthless Records, retaining majority ownership of the enterprise. That same year he co-founded N.W.A alongside Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and Arabian Prince. The group's 1988 album Straight Outta Compton became a landmark of American music, giving voice to the realities of urban Black life with an unflinching directness that reshaped popular culture and drew national scrutiny.

As a solo artist his 1988 release Eazy-Duz-It carried his rasping, unmistakable voice to a wide audience, and through Ruthless he championed other artists, among them Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Widely called the "Godfather of Gangsta Rap," he built one of the most influential independent labels in hip-hop history and helped move West Coast rap to the center of the commercial mainstream.

On the twenty-sixth of March 1995, at Los Angeles, he died of complications from AIDS, roughly one month after his diagnosis, at the age of thirty. In 2016 he was inducted, with his N.W.A brethren, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. May the architect of a sound that gave a generation its voice be honored, and long remembered.