The Untold Truth Of Dr. Dre

May 2024 · 2 minute read

Anybody who watched MTV in the early '90s is familiar with the nasty feud between Dr. Dre and his former N.W.A. compatriot Eazy-E (Eric Wright). In the video for the second single off "The Chronic," "F*** Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')," (which was shortened to "Dre Day" for broadcast), a character who looks exactly like Eazy-E named Sleazy E has a series of demeaning misadventures, including sucking up to a record industry executive and holding a "Will rap for food" sign on the side of a road. 

The song itself is a diss track against Eazy-E, including quite threatening lyrics like "used to be my homie, used to be my ace / now I wanna slap the taste out ya mouth" and "oh don't think I forgot, let you slide / let me ride, just another homicide." Later in 1993, Eazy-E responded with his own diss track called "Real Muthaph****in G's." Representative lyrics, which are clearly about Dre, include lines like, "Hey yo, Doctor, here's another proper track / and it's phat, watch the sniper, time to pay the piper." So ... they basically threatened to murder each other in song.

But why such acrimony in the first place? Money. The gangsta rap collective N.W.A. came apart in 1990 after only a few years of togetherness, when Ice Cube left because he felt he wasn't being properly paid (via The Hip Hop Foundation). Dr. Dre also had concerns that Ruthless Records boss Jerry Heller was cheating the band, and told Eazy-E to either get rid of Heller or lose a band mate and a friend. Eazy-E chose Heller. (Around the same time, a record company bodyguard named Suge Knight was considering starting his own record label — that became Death Row Records, the new home for Dr. Dre.) The feud was only resolved with the death of Eazy-E from complications of AIDS in 1995, and the acrimonious N.W.A. split was permanent. The only member of N.W.A. to attend Eazy-E's funeral was DJ Yella, reports LA Weekly. In 2015, Dre's stance had softened considerably, saying that if Eazy-E were alive today, "we would probably be working together right now, and arguing about the work," reports The Hollywood Reporter.

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