 Check it, check it, check it, this is Unique House, it's your boy, E-C-E-O, and I'm here with the lovely, amazing, official Miss Jamaica, what's going on? None of you know my deal, well, go on. But I want y'all to know, y'all need to like, subscribe, share, all our platforms, please. We are on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, you name it, we're on it. We even on Snapchat, but the most important thing is our Patreon page. That's where you're gonna find all our full length interviews after a while. So, we have them on YouTube right now, but you're not gonna find them after a while. So, we just warning y'all, okay? Small membership, that's all it takes. Man, we got a guy here y'all today. Really, you know, most underrated, but one of the hardest dudes, man, I've been watching your moves. You know what I'm saying? Lonzo is in the big, and everybody got something to say about Lonzo, man. Real talk, Lonzo Williams, right? Man, hey man, thank you. I love the name, Lonzo. Yes. I don't hear a lot of- OG, not the bald, I'm the OG. I don't hear a lot of black guys with that name though, Lonzo. You know what? It's a derivative of my real name, which is Alonzo, and my family is three of us. My dad was Al. My cousin was the original Lonzo. Okay. He didn't like it, and they called me by my middle name, which is Eric. Okay. And I like Lonzo better, so my cousin moved, I just took his name. I like the name, Lonzo. Just do voices for radio, don't you hear it? Talk. You heard them both? Yeah, I heard them both. It sounded like this dude up in the- I was radio trained, see what I'm saying? That's my DJ career started in the radio. Wow, that's hard, man. Pressure out of high school. Somebody heard your voice and was like, you need to be- Actually, no, no, no, no, because I stuttered. I used to stutter and had a bad ass lisp and shit. Oh, I was all messed up. How did you get rid of that? Just got tired of being clowned. Just got tired of being clowned and bullied. Oh, you talk like Daffy Duck. And even when I get mad, it'll come back. All that's concentration, it'll go away quick, okay? Let me get pissed off. Can't understand what I'm saying. Wow. Man, I gotta ask you, man, boys in the hood. Yeah. That was done in your house? It's the demos, yeah. The demos, yeah. It was big for me, you know what I'm saying? Like I'm old, because that's big for me. I'm tired of that movie. Huh? I'm tired of that movie. Why? He plays it all the time. I don't play anything unless I play New Jack City. I play a lot of- No, you did. You went through your sales and he would play it for months. Every single day you get home, he'll just have this one movie he'll put on. Then he'll go to Friday. Then he'll go back to the future. Then he'll go to San Francisco. Man, don't worry about none of that, man. Let's talk about this house, man. So how was it, and how did they even, did they have a budget? Or back then, you just gave them a- Nah, nobody had no money back then with me. Nobody had no money with me. And I had a club for years, even at the dark. Yeah, I gotta ask you about that club. You breaking it up too early, cause- Okay, we get to it. Yeah, Eve at the dark, I'm hearing that you weren't even the owner of that building. I wasn't owner of the building. I ran the building. Was it Jeffy's or something? Jeffy, yeah. But you ran the building. The old man, Jeffy, and my daddy was best friends. Okay, okay. So when my old man saw me doing what I was doing at another spot over in Torrance, he actually caught me with a pot of money. Okay. Thought I was son of a dope. And my old man had a strict rule. I ain't fucking with nobody missing no son of a dope. I will kill you if I catch you son of a dope. My mom had passed. I'm living in her house. Pop's got keys. Wow. I love daddy. I'm in the bedroom, watching cotton money. He walks in. Dig it. I got his salary on the bed. This is 76, 77. Okay, I got his salary on the bed. Okay, about $600. He ain't make that much money. Yeah, he ain't getting that. You know, he works for Caltrans. You might get that every two weeks, okay? And he's like, oh, hell no. If you son often to kill your ass. No, no, no, no. Pop's just cool. Calm down. I'm doing this. I'm DJing over the spot. He knew what the spot was, but he says to me, ain't that much DJing in the motherfucking world? Wow. Yeah, he making that much money. Not for that much money. He came by one day and he saw what I was doing. He was like, damn, y'all got it going on. He liked it. He thought I loved it. We had about, I don't know, 700 kids, four hours ahead. That's $2,800. That's a lot of money for a cat 21 years old. Okay. He got into the business part of it. And he said, well, man, I got a buddy, got a spot you might want to go talk to him. They set up a meeting. I'm sitting there, I'm 21 years old. His friend, Jeffty, big six foot four. Never really smiled type of brother. Yeah. Okay. I was always intimidated by him. And my daddy's sitting there. They, my daddy on one side. I'm gonna meet my dad on one side. Jeffty behind his desk. They sitting there drinking brown liquor, cutting my deal for me. Wow. I ain't got much to say. Yeah. I ain't got much to say. I'm just sitting there. But you're listening. I'm listening. Okay. That's the main thing. And old man said, look here, if you want to, if you want to build it, I'm gonna give you a shot. But if you fuck me, I'm gonna kick your ass. God damn it. Why he says, if you gotta kick your ass, I'm gonna kick your ass for embarrassing me. Exactly. Like that. Then he says, I can get you, my daddy said, I can get you in, but I can't keep you in. Wow. Okay. And he said, the next catch is, if you want to, if you want to rent the room, gotta take it every week. I'm like, I ain't got no every week money, man. I'm 21 years old. Wow. I got a kid, I ain't got no money. But if you pack another one out, you should be able to. Once, once twice a month though. But if you packing it out, you should be able to do it every week. Well, you know what? You absolutely great. But I didn't think like that then. I'm thinking, I'm a every two week niggas. Right. I'm a every other week. I ain't know, I ain't know. So he pushed you to be better. He pushed me to be better. Wow. But one thing I'm going to say, I love your daddy. And I wish more daddies was like that. I can't do, baby, I can't take nothing from him. He was my best friend, my biggest supporter. And he kicked me in my ass when I needed it. I love that. Okay. That's big. And he was, he was at the club. I was telling a friend of mine about my man of the day. He was at the club. He was partying more than I was. He had more girls than I was. No, my son on the club. Come on, he's got my son on the club. That's all I did. So you were raised with your mom and your dad? Growing up, you were raised with your mom and your dad? I was raised with my mom and my dad. They split up when I was like 14. Okay. Did I break your heart? No. Why not? I understand both of my parents were alcoholics. Okay. Okay. My dad was a happy alcoholic. He drank, we had a party. We played dominoes and cars and stuff. My mama would have whipped somebody's ass. So I'm like, I got to hide. So when... When they split, you didn't do it with him? I stayed with my mom for a while. And this is a true story. I have you shared this on my own podcast. That's a true story. The night of the Watch Stacks concert with Isaac Hayes and Staplefingers, Donald C. and we had this big concert cost a dollar to get in my first concert. That's cheap. I wish it was. It was dollar backed in. And that night, I did that with my friends at the concert and my girlfriend, who I thought was my girlfriend, she ended up sleeping with some other dude. It was a whole big, big old mess. My partner was smoking in the car. I never smoked, but I got smoke in my clothes. Came home, mom that had a couple of shots. She smelled smoke on me and she accused me of smoking. My mama don't smoke, but she was in that mode and I swear to God right through this day, I don't know why it happened. She went to hit on me and I would defend myself and somehow or another, her nose started bleeding. And she swear to God, I hit her. I had never hit my mama, I never would hit my mama and put me out. And what did your daddy do to you when he heard that? I told him, my daddy knew what he raised. He knew then what I was that kind of cat. I've been getting my ass up all this time. I'm gonna start fighting back now. I said, man, she had been drinking and I don't know what I did was put my hand in the front of my face because she was on me. And when I put my hands down, her nose was dripping with a little blood. I'm like, oh, shit. She's like, you didn't give it, no, I didn't. She wear it on my ass again. And she showed me the door. It was about two o'clock in the morning. I had to walk from my mom's house to my dad. My dad, he lived only about half a mile from the pad. He didn't abandon us. He lived like a half a mile from the pad. So I had to walk to his house, but at that time, the road between my house and his house was undeveloped. So I had to walk to this big old field we called the rabbit field. And the rabbit field had snakes and frogs and coyotes and raccoons and shit. And then I'm here in all kind of shit looking at my ass. I'm scared of something. Then I got to my dad's house. How old were you at this time? About 15. Okay. My dad, I got to my dad's house. My dad was hard of hearing. And he couldn't hear the doorbell. He couldn't hear me knocking before I had to sleep in his truck. He never liked his truck. Luckily. He never liked his truck. So I slept in his truck and he got a great guy to go to work. That was, hey, pops, the fuck you doing here? I told him what happened. And by that point, I stayed with my dad. How many y'all, how many siblings? I had two sisters and two brothers. Or two sisters and one brother. Or you fell in between? I'm the oldest boy. Oh, oldest boy. I'm an older sister. Okay, okay. Wow. I just, when I think about you, man, for you to see the early developments of NWA and all the stuff that goes with you, there was a power punch with you to be able to witness something like that. And then see the extraordinary movement of what these people's brands did, these people's lives did. You would play the major part in that. You know what I mean? So I just commend you and thank you for that. Appreciate it. I appreciate you for even playing part in that because without you, it never happens. You know what I mean? You know, you write, and I just did a documentary on one of the things that just recently happened. Okay. That was a Super Bowl from last year. Yeah, yeah. It premieres on February 17th at the Pan-African Film Festival, which was almost a year since the Super Bowl. Yeah, yeah. You know, a year and a week since this thing happened. That's right. We got it in the Pan-African Film Festival. And that was popped, you know, before the Super Bowl, before the club was in the Super Bowl, I was being interviewed for a documentary. Yeah. And at the very beginning of the documentary, they asked me some questions and the question was like, I actually, I went to answer the question and it opens up with the Super Bowl show. Wow. And, you know, West Coast Hill Pop is a lot different from East Coast Hill Pop. When the people who have been, they always give credit to Cool Herc no matter what happens. Yeah, yeah. They always give Cool Herc his credit no matter how big they are. And where's Cool Herc from? Cool Herc is from New York. No, he's not. Well, okay. He's from Jamaica. That's why he's here. Come on, bro. Don't fall for this bracket. Don't fall for this bracket. Don't get caught up in this bracket. Right, right, right. He's from Jamaica. He's from Jamaica. It's a game being played, man. It's a game being played on this show, man. He's from Jamaica. And they said that he's the one that, you know, started it. Started it back in the day. I can't stand this woman thing. And when it comes to me, I did the same thing he did here on the West Coast. Yeah. But. You don't get those roses. Well, I kind of understand why. Because I'm 10, 12 years older than most of my group mates. Eight years older, nine years older than Dre. Okay. So when I was 21 doing Peck Park, 14, 15 years old, why would he want to hang out with me? I'm gonna catch a case hanging out with a 14-year-old kid, okay? That's for real. I'm 12 years older than Q. Yeah. When I opened the event to dark at 21, what Q was like, nine, 10, fifth grade. So they don't really know my prerequisite to becoming who I became. And most cats that do know and around them all. Correct. But when you think about just the movie and the way it depicted you, it seemed like they created a bad guy in you in that movie. So that's the part where you start to see, the world start to receive you in a way to where it's hard to get from around those blows. I love that shit though. I love that shit. You see, I'm an old school player, man. All you gotta do is give me an opportunity. I'm gonna fit, you know, like James Brown say, you ain't gotta open the door. You ain't gotta give me nothing. Just open the door, I'll get it myself. Yeah, yeah. And that's what they did. So when you think of, okay, we're gonna go all the way back cause I wanna go in. When we first, you know, the first thing starts to develop, you got the club, how you say, I remember hearing that you went, you seen Dre somewhere and you, Dre grew up on street. He grew up in your street? How did you know he was a DJ? Or how did you? I didn't. So how did you run into that? All his uncles and family grew up on the same street, Carson Avenue. Okay. Okay. His dad and my older sister, they was all buddies. Okay. His mom and my older sister, they all kind of hung out. I didn't see Dre on a regular basis. Again, I felt, I mean, he's older than you. Of course. But when he came to the UF to dark, and I realized, man, he let me know, hey man, I'm Theodore's son. Theodore who? Theodore Young. Oh, I remember the Youngs. I remember his uncles and aunties or whatever the case may be. Okay, cool. Doc, you got action. Cause I know your people. Yeah. He came with Easy though. So he brought, you met Easy and Dre the same day. Same day. Okay. Same day. They wasn't dressed right. So back in the day, we had dress codes. Okay. And other than the many first night. They still do have dress codes. Yeah. They had different dress codes put it that way. Okay. And you wasn't on tennis shoes allowed. You know, jeans wasn't allowed back then. And they had on jeans and tennis shoes and they couldn't come in. And Dre came back a couple of weeks later, dressed like he was supposed to. I let him out. Wow. And this dress like he was supposed to is these pictures that you see and people, they laugh at these pictures. They say, man, he disco boys. They even Easy, you know, took it and flipped it only once it became gangster. But you was the guy that he says, basically, this is a disco area. What was that song? Y'all had some slow bangles, man. I love them so. Lovers turn off the lights. Oh man, y'all boys was heavy, man. We was players, man. We wasn't trying to fight. We're trying to get laid, dude. Come on, man. And that's one of the things about West Coast Hip Hop that I really just like is that people forget the roots of West Coast Hip Hop come from, we're dance promoters. First thing we all did, we all, we was DJs and dance promoters, okay? DJs don't DJ fights. You never see a DJ at a goddamn fight. Last time I was here, I interviewed Alex Thomas. He was talking about dancing on SoulTron. Okay. So that was that time. That was that time. That was that time. So my hero was not Cornelius, man. For real, for real. For real, okay? If I had money to put cameras at Eve at the dock, I woulda did it back then. It wasn't that kind of party back then, okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had very few pictures from Eve at the dock and everybody wasn't carrying a video camera or a camera and they back pocket back then. You had to go and develop the goddamn film. Yeah, yeah. You had to get somebody with a camera to record that shit, develop that shit and you might get a bunch of bullshit. Even when you're taking pictures, you have to develop this. You don't know what you're gonna get. Ain't no SD card that's sticking to the computer. I don't like deleting. Delete, no, Negro. You gotta go to the mall or go to one of the mall, little pop-up shops and stick the whole road in there. You might get it back in an hour and if you got something you can use, you do it. If you don't, you don't. Well, I gotta ask you about this because the key property, I gotta get it out the way. I sat down with B.J. the Bonnie Hunter. He says that he came to Eve at the dock and when he did, you had some big dude at the dock and this dude told him to take his hat off. The dress code, he didn't wanna go by. He said when he came in, he came on in regardless. He wasn't paying, so he don't pay at your club. He did not pay, he came in. When he got in there, you know what I'm saying? This big old dude ended up roughing him up and you and the whole crew, yeah, the whole world-class wreck crew, y'all jumped him over there and is this a true story or was he making this up? What camera's my camera? All both of these are some bullshit, okay? Let me explain something to you. The reason why he didn't pay is because I had a girl that lived in the Nixon Gardens as a cashier, okay? I had four cashiers. We was open from 10 to six in the morning, okay? That's a long time to sit but one place trying to collect some money. So we had a girl that worked as a relief cashier at Eve at the dock and she had a guest list plus B.J. was a shot caller. That's no bullshit, he was a shot caller. So I figured I had a relationship with all the shot callers. That's why we never got robbed, okay? Yeah, because you never- Nobody didn't fuck with us because I had a relationship with all the shot callers. Now, I didn't mean B.J. wasn't tight, tight, tight. We weren't no enemies. Correct. So if there was some problems with the bounty hunters or the guys from Nixon Gardens, I'd go to B.J., okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He never paid, okay? But it wasn't like he was parking nobody. We couldn't be on the corner of Avalon and El Segundo in Los Angeles between Watts, Compton, Gardena, Carson, being no punks. Wasn't no there going. We weren't no punking. Y'all weren't going. We weren't no punking going on, okay? Now there was a situation that eventually escalated to some folks getting thrown through windows and thrown out windows. Y'all jumped B.J. Well, we were no punks, okay? Then jumped B.J. the bounty hunter. But then jumping, he, well, actually, truthfully, I'm gonna tell you what happened. B.J., B.J. might have forgotten about this. I remember when I talked about this before B.J. talked about it. The brother that B.J. is talking about was Ashley Dre's uncle. The roughed him up. The roughed him up. They both was about the same size, about 5'10". Niggas about four feet wide in a piece, okay? And it was like two bulls fighting, okay? I'm not breaking that shit up. Okay? No, I'm not breaking that shit up. But when B.J. got to fighting, the shit just got to spreading. Yeah, it spread throughout the club. I remember walking out the club, my office, what the fuck is going on? Somebody hit me over here with a pool stick. Paya! Damn, y'all kicking in there. It was doing, it was going down like a God damn Western movie, okay? Niggas everywhere, okay? And when I finally got, came back to my sister. When I was signed, I grabbed me a couple of cats and it was only crackin'. Crumble. And then my security guard came in, he sprayed, what's it called, a tear gas. Tear gas, that's what I'm talking about. The other shit. Mace? The mace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Niggas sprayed mace like he was a glade air freshener. Shh! Niggas. Everybody was crying and coughing. Cause that shit, when that shit hit air, it's like Kool-Aid hitting water. It's concentrated. So when that shit hit air, it expands. People was having, God damn, asthma attacks. People were trying to put a drain in it at night. Everybody was in it at night. I mean, my office crying and blinking like a motherfucker. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. One girl had a asthma attack. Another one had a seizure. I was fucked up. You were messed up. I was fucked up, yeah. So after this, the story goes that a few weeks later, the club was burnt up. The club never been burnt up. Clubs didn't stand there like, oh, that's a bush, you know. I was just telling you, the club never been burnt up. That's a bush. Clubs ain't never been burnt up. I don't know where the fuck that come from. We never had a fire. Clubs were burnt down. They ain't no way to go. It couldn't be in the neighborhood no more. It was not opening no more after that. Bullshit. Bullshit. That motherfucker still standing right here this day. I ain't never had a match in that, but you're smoking the club. We never had no kind of fire. That's a bush in right there. So that's a house. That's a bush shit. Okay. I retired from the club in 2019. How the fuck is it gonna burn up? Dang. I stayed there from 1979. I had three other clubs in the meantime, but I had the keys the whole time. That's the kind of relationship that me and the old man had. Jeff, this, man. Him and my daddy, me and him did more business than me and my daddy died when I was, I don't know, 47, but me and Jeff, he stayed in partnership from 1979 to 2019. Wow. And we never had an issue, okay? I was one of the few people that ran his whole corner. His cafe, the club downstairs, the bar downstairs, and the Eve after dark. You were three venues down there. Now you got these guys, you got a studio in your house. A studio in my house. And this is where this movie, where they depict an easy rapping, but came really rough. Came up a gif if he gave it all. That was in your house. Yes. But they didn't, I don't think they said that in the movie. They didn't say that in my house. No, no, no, no. They didn't say that in the movie. No, they didn't. So when these kids are at your house, you put a studio together, did you know that they had talent to make music or was it something, you trained them on? Who was dealing with the engineering and all this stuff? It was different back then. So what type of studio was this? And who was paying for it? It's his studio. I know, but who paid? American Express. Me and American Express loaned me the money and I paid them back, okay? That's how the shit got done. It's a backstory to that. Okay. Backstory is where I live at right now when I was a youngster, my daddy had a, my daddy always had a huge hustler. But his hustle was to cut lawns, to cut trees from star-shrinked the systems. So I worked with my dad. So the neighborhood I live in right now was one of our main neighborhoods. At a James, the blues singer, yeah, lived in my neighborhood. Wow, really? We cut her lawn on a regular basis. And you spoke to her? I knew it like I was talking to you. Okay, we gon' get to that later on. We kicking it, like I'm kicking it with you. My brother became one of her road managers. We're her roadies, what do you wanna call it? But after my mother passed, and Edda was always like a distant mentor to me in the music business, okay? Watch out for this, watch out for that. Watch out for this. Don't let them give you nothing. Don't let them throw something in that shit that you saw and wrote that they hit it first. That kind of shit, okay? You know, she had drugs, drug issues. Yeah. And when I got my CBS deal, my Sony deal, Wrecking Crew got a Sony deal, Wrecking Crew and Stereo Crew got a Sony deal. Edda told my brother to Alonzo, Johnny Otis, about to sell this house. Well, Johnny Otis, another big-time blues singer, had just did the Back to the Future, 1985, 86. He got a shitload of money. Yeah, yeah. Like Jay Clappin, he moved to the heels of Alton Dina, left the house vacant. But he no for sale sign on the pair of my brother. He didn't sell him none. He wasn't no for sale sign on it. How much did you pay for that? 125,000 dollars. Nice. 125,000 dollars. That was a lot of money back then, yes, sir. Yeah, sir. My house bill was 600 dollars on that first. My daddy said, 600 dollars? You can you make that son? I'm like, yeah, I think I can. My daddy house bill was 185 dollars. And it came with the studio. Came with the studio, that's why I bought it. That's whole of it. All these are gonna buy doodles. So if there was no for sale sign, you just went up to him and say, hey, I want to buy your house? No, my partner, one of my best friends, Ralph Hope, I got to give him his plug. The real estate guy. I said, man, there's a house over here by Edda James, might be up the sale. Could you check? He ran the address, found out, called people up. He wanted to sell it. They said, yeah. Wow. So when you get in this house now, you do drain them coming immediately? No, that was already with me. We was already out there. So did y'all pay him over there? I had another house before then. I'll say it was over that dealing with me. I already had a smaller house. And you had a studio in that house? In that house. Wait, let me stop right quick. Cause you telling me you took these boys over. Have you talked to Drey since all this happened? They're not opposed to personal or no. No more. This is where the game go. I just wanted to see, you know, I asked these crazy questions, but they really real questions need to be asked. So like, for you to do all this with them and spend all this time with them, you would think that there would be some type of- Bond. You would think? You know what I mean? You know, Q, my name fall out of Q's mouth more than anybody. Q always give me my props. He just did an interview recently in the interview. In fact, I got a copy of the interview, he said- He shows the person that he is. Lons of Williams, don't get the respect he deserve for him on the West Coast. He looked out for everybody. Wow. How do you feel when you hear that? I love it. Because it solidifies my position in the West Coast hip hop coming from somebody with his magnitude. Okay. At first, I used to have a debate, I used to get into with people, because people, well these guys gangsters, they said, no, they weren't gangsters, but they weren't- Q is not a gangbanger, but he's probably the most gangster cat of all of them. Why you say that? Q walked away from NWA because he wasn't getting treated right. Right. When solo, the height of this shit. Yeah. When solo. Okay. Stepped out on faith and hope. Okay. Q came up with a killer album. Shortly after that, Q started making movies. Okay. Did you knew that he had all of this in him? Q was always talented, but understand, I'm 12 years older than Q. Right. So I'm 27, 28, he's 15, 16. I hear it, but I ain't- I ain't hearing it. I ain't listen to him. I hear him. Because he a kid. He a kid. Kids got all kinds of ideas and plans. So the first time you actually knew that he was gonna be somebody is when he made that move? When I start, no, no, no. And I looked at all the moves he was making. Every time he made one move, when they introduced him into the movie business as an actor, I'm gonna start making my own movies. And then conquered the movie. At that point, he got three franchises. Yeah. He got three franchises. Three different movies from three different situations that are under his umbrella. Then he says, you know what? Oh, try sports. I'm gonna start some sports shit. Got the three on three. Yeah. If that ain't no gangster shit, my name ain't Lanzo. Lanzo, man, listen, man. I'm gonna go back a little bit, back into the story. I'm gonna get back on this other side with you and Dre. Cause y'all, you know, he was in there. I seen him in, I seen the picture. You know what I'm saying? You was on there too, but he was really posing on that thing. I ain't never been ashamed of my shit. I do my shit with pride, baby. So that was the disco era. You gotta understand, I know it. You know what? It wasn't quite the disco. We were just coming off of it. Right. We were coming out of disco and we was coming into electro funk. Electro funk. Okay. Yeah. Disco, when I first started trying to get records played or get record deals for us, oh, disco gon' die. That's why I keep saying, how can we be at the 50th anniversary of hip hop? That made, do you tell me that hip hop was older than disco? It ain't capy, but I'ma roll with the masses. But disco, I'm discoing in high school damn there. Okay, go ahead. You basically, at this point, you don't want, the rap music is coming. It comes in, hey. I'm loving it. I'm hip hop, and I'm talking about that first phase. I'm loving it. I'm talking about the cool hurt, all of the first phase. You see it, but the movie say you didn't like it too much. You didn't want to play it in your club. See? That's what the movie said. Let me tell you what the movie, let me tell you something about movies. Tell you about something about movies. It's something that's called creative license. Okay? They can take one thing and put it on something else to make it more interesting. As long as they don't put me in a dress, cause I never did know shit like that, they can, or do some shit this way out of my character, I did not like something about them, but that wasn't the music. But what was it? It was the name. Niggas would have. Niggas would have the tunes. I'm born in the fifties, man. I'm 65 years old, man. I'm born in the support of 1957, dude. When I heard the word nigga, it was not in mixed company. My daddy called somebody to nigga, you had to really mess up. Okay. But still, now you hear that word, but these boys, they got a lot of music. Did you like the music? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you like the music? Hold on, hold on, hold on. I love boys in the hood. In fact, I'll tell you how this got through. When easy brought boys in the hood, they can sit in my house, they laughed at his ass. They laughed at it. They laughed at it? They laughed at it. Oh, you two laughed at it. Everybody laughed at it, everybody laughed at it. Everybody else in my house laughed at it. Q was there? Q, yeah, Q was there. They all laughed. They like, oh, she's trying to rap. Oh my God. That was the attitude. Who brought boys in the hood? Q did. But understand this. Understand this. Understand this. At that time, one of the hottest records in the country was Pickin' Buggers by Bismarck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pickin' Buggers, man. Come on, don't. That's hard, man. OK, so when he came in the house, everybody laughed and like, oh, man, I don't know. I don't know. And I said, you know what? Don't laugh, man, because strange as shit has happened. I'm an optimistic motherfucker. That's what I claim to fame. That's why when you go to a hip-hop event, everybody know me, because at one point in time, everybody that came through my house in my club. But I don't know if they laughed, and they made it. Don't mean nothing. But they laughed at it, because they don't know if it's going to go. Because Easy Voice was not a typical rapper's voice. It was not a typical rapper's voice. It was not a typical rapper's voice. And Drake then chopped it up, took it forever to do the shit. Easy was embarrassed to do the shit, because that's why he threw a cube and yellow out the studio. Locked the studio up, because he didn't want to put glasses on the whole nine yards. That shit was real. That was the real part. That was all real. So boys in the hood. What's wrong with boys in the hood? It's not a gangster rapper. It can't go hard, though. It's not a gangster record, OK? So when people have to understand, look at the early pictures from NWA. They were not gangster imaged. They were wearing tams, and caps, and jeans, and shit. And to later on, they started wearing radio gear. I got to ask you this, because I got offended about it, too. Why you don't mention DOC like that? Because he was with them. Me and you know what? You don't mention him, though. I'll use my boy out here in the West Coast, and y'all, where are the mentions at? DOC. See, understand DOC, OK? DOC comes from another one of my boys, Dr. Rock. Correct, Dr. Rock. You the one? I got the story from him, so you were right. Dr. Rock worked at Eva to Dark, OK? And he moved, suddenly, to Texas. I know why, but I ain't going to tell you right now. Why? He moved to Texas. OK, baby, I'm in the way. No, no, no, no, no. We're first. Y'all ran him out. No, no, I didn't run him out of nothing. Who ran him out? We're talking about that. He had to go to Texas, OK? So record crew blows up. We go to Texas. There's Dr. Rock. He didn't blow up in Texas, doing the mixes on the time during the morning show. He got a group called Feeling Fresh Crew. That's right. I meet DOC, everybody cool. Then they come back to the pad to do some productions in the studio. That's when I meet them again, OK? And they're all cool. Everything is lovey dovey. Me and DOC is kicking it, OK? Then they all leave, OK? They all go and join Rufus. So we don't have a super tight relationship. We got love for each other. But when they came from Dallas, you was all in the midst of what was going on. I understand this. At that time, I don't sit in studios. OK. I'm an executive producer. I want to hear the shit when they get done. I got other shit to do. I'm the one that's selling the records. I'm the one doing the deals. I'm the one. I'm still doing clubs. I'm still doing. Drake here to hit the keys in the studio. Remember happy days? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our homeboy with the fines and keys. I'm already hit the keys, man. Lock up when you get through. That's it. That was how I rolled. Wow. That's how everybody would battle cap and tell you the same thing. Nick, if I'm busy, hit the keys is. Lock up when you get through. So that's why you didn't really have a bond with him like you did with Drake. Right. I didn't deal with him. Because you didn't deal with him that much. He was going back and forth to Texas. They had already left. They did do the ruthless thing. Right. And we never had a problem. But Eazy E. Now let's go back to him because he would have been the one forcing the issue to not be at Lanzo's place because he's trying to do his own thing. No. Well, see, I introduced him over to Jerry. Jerry Held? I introduced Eazy to Jerry Held. But I introduced him to Audio Achievement, the bigger studio. OK. So you were trying to help him. Dude, I've been that dude since day one. That's why I'm the godfather. Everybody comes to me to find out what they need when they eat. Look at the Roofless Logo. It looks just the same guy that made the Roofless Logo, made the Crew Cut Logo, made the Techno Hop Logo, made a bunch of logos because that was our artist. Eazy's first lawyer was my lawyer. Eazy didn't have a lawyer. I took him to my lawyer. He can't claim who's got his first contract. Wow, so OK. So Eazy basically used you for your entrepreneurship skills? It was our, no, no, it was just cool. He learned it from me. He utilized my, Eazy was a student of mine. He watched me. He saw what I was doing. And he took it to another level. That's all. OK. He saw me making money with records. When he started making his records, he knew he couldn't get into the swap meet unless he called Lanzo. Lanzo had to connect with the swap meets. He couldn't get to K-Dag with Greg Mack because, because the sponsorship was custom, Lanzo had to connect with Greg Mack. He couldn't get a hookup with Jerry Heller because Lanzo had to connect with Jerry Heller. And you the one setting with Jerry Heller? Yeah, man, who do you need that? Man, I need to meet, I want to meet Jerry Heller. And you want me some money. Was Jerry like a big name at that time? No, Jerry was working with Jerry's partner, working with the LA Dream Team. Rec and crew had just got a deal with Sony. But I did the deal, I did the deal myself at Sony. Jerry was around, but he didn't do the deal because my lawyer and I, my lawyer pulled my coat and said, do you really want to get, because they came after us because lovers were so big. I saw them lovers were so big. CBS came looking for us, OK? They called me up, hey, we got a meeting with you. Larkin' on, I want to meet you guys. Cool. So I go down there. Was lovers before it turned off tonight? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I go to Sony, he says, I want to give you all a record deal. How much? $100,000. Cool! So I called up my lawyer, hey man, I got a record deal. Do I need a manager? He said, why do you need a manager right now and you already got a record deal? All you're going to do is give away $20,000. He's going to want 20%, you're going to give away $20,000. He says, I'll do, I'm going to do the deal anyway. You just get your cell phone. This one's cell phone was still locked in the car. You couldn't even put them in your pocket. Yeah, you couldn't, the big gray one. The big gray one, stop playing man. Yeah, I'm playing man, with 75 cents a minute. Yeah, it wasn't easy. So I'm a baller now, right? I'm a baller now. You got a phone. I'm officially a baller. I got a lawyer, I got a BMW with a phone in it. And a beeper, you got your beeper. Got to have a beeper. Got to have a beeper, man. And my Jerry cup was moist as a mother phone. It wasn't no curl on the place. Come on, man. Come on, man. Curl on the face. Everything's a shame. And a pillow in my house ain't greasy as hell. I don't know how to say soul glow. Yeah. So my lawyer, the lawyer and the business of fair department of Sony cut the deal and he would tell me what I wanted. This is all, they're offering this. If you take this right here, you get this right here. All advantage you're going to do is relay that shit to you. I have always been a businessman. I've been in business since I was 19 years old. Okay. So I'm not stupid. I did go to college, didn't graduate but I passed a few college classes. So I understand basic shit like that. So he told me what I had to do. Okay, cool. We got to deal. So Jerry was around, but he didn't get to deal. So now he's still around because he wants to be a part of maybe some of this tour money. So he's still kind of cool. But he's still trying to be a part of it. He's still trying to be a part of it. So we got our check from CBS. And when I did the math, we was assured about 1500, I don't know, we showed about $6,000. Wow. But it's fucking money yet. I didn't know where it was. And I didn't get my lawyer, I didn't get, I didn't talk to my lawyer. And I called Jerry. I said, but we're missing about $6,000. What you think it might be? Let me make some phone calls. And when Jerry found the money, it was at the union after. Because CBS Sony is a union company. So they took out union dues. But we weren't union artists. Yeah. We had to go with what they do, what they call Tav Hartley. And which means we ain't mess with y'all right now and get our $6,000. Now, Jerry comes back, find, we all go down to the union hall, sign off Tav Hartley. They give us our $6,000. Well, it actually was a $6,000. Everybody got some more money. These guys that went through the money already. Everybody was broke. Yeah. So when Jerry found this money, oh Jerry Heller, oh Jerry Heller, oh Jerry Heller, oh Jerry Heller, oh Jerry Heller. Okay. I had, that's how it went down. So they was praising Jerry Heller so much. I asked him then, I said, y'all want Jerry to map? She said, yes, let's do it. Now, easy here about Jerry Heller. He wants to meet him. Wow. So Jerry Heller basically, he gets this one deal done because you pretty much called on him to get up. And then once you do that, they now, they all held Jerry Heller. Oh Jerry Heller. But how did you feel about that? I didn't care. You didn't care? No. Look, I understand that in music business, this shit right here has limitations. And you understood that at that time. I understood that, okay? I need something a little bit lighter than you. Get it, get it. That's it, that's it. So sometimes you need something a little bit lighter than you to get some things done. Let's talk about this right quick. I wanna, cause I said turn off the lights with Miss L.A. You know Miss L.A. Knew her when she was running around when they was all at your house. I pick her up every time, every time. And the boys was over there too? All the time. But Dre was over there during that time? Regularly. But they was not a thing at that time? No, that's my knowledge. And they basically was just running around doing music. That was amazing. No, everybody was doing music. My house was like house party. How many girls was over there? It might be anymore. It's a made account. It may be. No, no, no, no. It all depends what was happening. I had one that lived there. She wasn't my woman. She just lived there. And her friend would hang out there. Why was she living there? She wasn't your woman. Cause I was a bachelor. I didn't have no, I didn't have no. I had a women, okay. So she's living there, but so that makes it comfortable for other girls to be. Right. She liked the man. She went to the room, she went to the room and I was on tour. We was giggling a lot. So I had her on somebody to watch my house. So she would keep, look out for my house, keep it clean, blah, blah, blah. She got her in the room. Okay. And you know, we was cool. It was her, her and Dre was friends, put it that way. Okay. And it was cool that her friend would come through. Okay. And they would hang out, write songs, blah, blah, blah. And then, who else? Michelé would come by. My house was almost like watching house party. And I, nothing house party. The first one. And I look at that movie, you see all the people that I know personally that it eventually blew up. If you came to my house. That's what you would see. You would see a young DJ pool. You would see D-Barns. You'd see pool. DJ pool. DJ pool from Ice Cube, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see a young D-Barns. You see a DJ pool. You see Def Jeff. You see Coolio, Moringy, 19 years old. You know, a little easy. I mean, that's how my house flowed. Cause I was a bachelor. And it was kind of, you know, the studio made it kind of an attractive place. Cause we would leave the club and come to my house. Wow. So I was the black Hugh Hefner at one point in time. I gotta find out how did you know Michelle Lee could sing? Cause she sound like, you know, but how did you find out she could sing? We had just come off a tour and it was a Sunday night. Never forget Lones I Live. Cause I was, I had what I call a dry run. I didn't make no new friends on that tour that weekend. And I had a date and a dude called me up. Hey man, I got this girl. I want you to meet. Not right now. I gotta go dude. I got a date. No man, come on. I'm right around the corner. Right down the street. Right down the street. Dude, I got to go. I got a date. Lonesome, come on. Come on, come on. All right, man. Come on by the house. Can we go on the studio? And I'm sitting there. All right, what you got? And this is the first time you meet. First time I meet her. First time I meet her. I went buying those socks and no goddamn store and unbullish it. I'm like, okay. What you got, babe? And she wasn't saying that. I'm like, all right, man. Dude, she bullshied. Come on, I gotta go. So she steps around in front of me, turns her back and starts singing. God damn. So you actually heard her sing before you actually heard her spoke. Right, she didn't say a word. She didn't say a shit. How you doing? That kind of bullshit. And she steps around in front of the mixing board, turned her back and starts singing. Damn, she can sing her ass off. So I got up to see if she had some kind of recording advice or something, you know. And when she realized I was doing it, she turned around and looked at me and kept on singing and said, God damn baby can blow. And I said, she said, thank you. Oh, shit, what the fuck happened? What the fuck happened? Okay, he said, yeah, man, that's the part. I'm like, damn. So I got her number, I kept her number. And contrary to her movie, it was about a year later, I was about to do Turn Off the Lights and Mona wasn't available. A girl who sang Lover, she wasn't available. She was working with Kashif in Connecticut I heard of Kashif. I know Kashif. Yeah, that was my boy. Me and Draidenen was having issues. Me and the crew was having issues. So I found some money to get him in the studio and I was under pressure to get him in the studio because they were ready to do something else. They wanted to be gangsters now. We got to do this one more song. Oh man, nobody wanted to do it. Nobody wanted to do it, nobody wanted to do it. So I'll never forget, I was at the Compton Swap Meet dropping off some other records and I remember something, I remember something a lady had told me once before and I wrote it and started writing it in the Compton Swap Meet, wrote it on one of those sleeves of a record and took it to Draidenen, he had a beat he was playing with, said, man, let's do this. Oh man, do this right here. So I found some money, went to the studio and like I said, when we got to go to the studio Mona wasn't available. So I thought about this girl I had met, I called her up and she was available. Contrary to her movie, she wasn't on no damn bus waiting and I went pick her up, brought her to the studio and but in the movie, when she started talking they had a fit, what a man, I ain't gonna get this many mouth sound in broadness, blah, blah, blah, blah, man, I had a call to make an executive call. Hey, she's singing this song. And you wrote that song. I wrote it with a word, everybody's part, nobody wanted to do it. And she went in, she did a good job. She did a great job. But. What's the name of this song? You turn off the lights, let's get one thing understood. You don't know that? Yeah, I want to make sure it was that song. Yeah, man, that's what I'm telling you. We dealing with something here. This is good stuff for me. Now I love that song, man, and just your creativity. What took you to that place to even make you pin something like that? A lady told me that song. The lady, the lady that told me that, she said, you play, I'm a joker. You play too much. If you're going to do this right here, you better do it right. Because if not, I'm a hell of a woman. I want you to understand this. And I took this, rewrote what she said, and that's how we got turned off the lights. What did your girl, the one that, no, the older lady? Mona Lisa? No, Ella, Ella James. Oh, Ella James. What did she think about it? Oh, Ella loved it. You see what I'm saying? You gotta know that. Yeah, you gotta go back to her. You were talking about her a little bit. Ella was like a silent mentor. She warned me about Jerry Heller. And more, and more Alexander. She warned you. She warned me. But you didn't take heed to it. Well, you know what? She warned me about his partner, Maury. Okay. Okay, who managed the dream team, okay? And I said, and I'm not dealing with Maury. I'm dealing with his partner, Jerry Heller. She said, she had a crazy way of putting shit. She said something like, what, it's the same dog, just different fleas. Okay? I'm like, okay. Dang. She was all, it's the same dog, just different fleas. So I've got something like, two dogs, two dogs with the same pen, they both got fleas, something like that. And I'm like, okay, cool. That made me always protect myself. But we never, we never exchanged a whole lot of money with Jerry. We didn't. I heard you say that Jerry Heller, you an easy maintain the relationship throughout his life. Yeah. I heard you say that he didn't look sick before he died. Easy, was at my house a few weeks before he died. He didn't look sick at all. He didn't look sick at all. I heard you say these things, but did he ever show the regrets of him dealing with Jerry Heller to you? Well, round the end, cause I would go to Rufus. And cause I was kind of the Rufus Compton Leoside. Okay. Omar Bradley was the mayor of Compton. Me and Omar went to high school together. And when Rufus wanted to do something in Compton, it was always my job to go and make sure it was green lights. And I got out to the Rufus Camp one time and Jerry ain't there. Well, Jerry ain't, he ain't here no more. No more? And you know, he wasn't at the time to me to question. So I picked up the check and went on back about my business. And that's when I started hearing rumors about what they were saying about Jerry. That he wasn't, he wasn't here no more. He was allegedly posing and taking money and doing, you know, misappropriating funds, whatever the case may be. And I never witnessed it. And I didn't hear from easy. But Cube was upset about his portion early on. Cube was. So you knew something was going on. People don't realize that Arabian print was a part of NWA. He left for Cube. He's seen some too. He's seen some too. So you knew already, when you, what'd you do when you heard that song when Cube came out with it? I was the hardest one. I've heard it all my life. What did you say? I'm like, damn. He gave it all up. He's gone for the juggler. I had that. I bought that cassette. But yo, the Novaseline? Yeah. I had to have that. I'm gonna tell you something about Novaseline. I'm gonna tell you how people trip unnecessarily, trying to protect somebody. I got a club. I'm in Inglewood. I got a club in Inglewood, Kern Affair. I'm a DJ. I've been DJing all my life. I'm playing, and all of a sudden, I played Novaseline. Novaseline was a flowbanger. Bang, bang the flow. Everybody going to the flow. Okay? I'm, got my headphones on. I'm jamming, dude walks up to the DJ booth and I see him right over here, right over here. Oh, what's up, man? Take that shit off. Take that shit off. Hold on, hold on. I'm fumbling. He's thinking, I'm fumbling with the records and stuff. And so he's still, he ain't moving. He ain't moving. He tapped me on the shoulder. I said, man, what's happening? He said, man, take that shit off. They're just in my homeboys. Give me a minute. So meanwhile, well, he argued and the record's still going. Okay? So the record finally go off. And I ain't gonna, I gotta pack floor. Yeah. I gotta pack floor. I'm not taking this record off. I mean, see, man, what's up, dude? Oh, man, he's just in my homeboys. He don't know who I am. Well, who's your homeboy? Drain him. You know, Drain him. I pretty much know most of the real homies. No, man, but they just in my homeboys and I don't appreciate that shit. Are you serious? He mad at me. Now I'm playing no Vaseline. He don't even know these dudes. He don't know nobody. He just being a hood nut rider. Okay? He riding nuts in the third degree on some nigga, they don't care nothing about you. They do it now. That's the same thing they do on him. They wouldn't mind somebody. Yeah, yeah. It's the exact same thing. They'll just jump on your head in a minute, ride somebody else's nuts. They don't even know him. They don't even know him. They don't even know him. Just a day in there. Just ride him for no reason. Fan. So you, we gotta go back to Easy. We're going back to that, right? One question I had about Easy. So you knew Easy. Would you say Easy was the type of person who, cause when I think about the movie and I think about what he died from and how you said he wasn't sick. And a lot of times with men especially, when they hear of detrimental things, it's mental. Their mind goes, it's like they died first in their mind before they actually died. And that's what caused it to speed up. Is he a mentally strong person? Yeah, I would say so. I would say so. I was really, when I heard him like, he got what? That didn't, nobody, nobody, nobody had accepted that as being a cause. Plus when you see all the behind the scene questionable situations. I saw the marriage certificate. Easy's name was typed in. It ain't signed in. When you know stories about, you talk to the bodyguards and they say, man, we went there and he said he was gonna fight it and blah, blah, blah. Next thing we know, he's in the ventilator. Right, because he, cause it's just strange that if you're a mentally strong person that that took you out so quickly. But let me say this though, what Suga said, you know, on Arsenio Hall, I believe it was, you know, you just stick a little, stick a little, stick a little. I don't know. I was early on to say something like that. I remember him saying that. I saw, I've seen the interview. That was an early on. I've seen the interview several times and when you think about the whole situation, nobody associated with him has any physical issues like that, okay? It just don't set right. It just don't set right. So you don't believe it? It don't set right. So. It just, look, when, the first time I heard anybody died from AIDS was Rock Hudson. I remember as a kid, well, not a kid, grown ass man, Rock Hudson was every day on Channel Two News. Jerry Dunphy, who was the news reporter here in LA. Rock Hudson was resting comfortably in his home in Beverly Hills as he was treated for AIDS. This went on for months. For months when there's something that's gonna die, okay, and it went on for months. Magic Johnson, he had just as much money as Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson is clear, free and clear. I mean, it just don't make sense. That's all I'm saying, man. That's heavy. Magic Johnson quit the Lakers, quit NBA when he came HIV positive. So in your opinion, do you have any scenarios? No. I don't play that, no, I got no scenario. I ain't saying shit, okay? You know, again, I don't know, I wasn't that tight into the cap to make a scenario. Okay. It's just, for my own common sense, it just don't feel right. Let me ask you this, Dr. Dre, let's go to him, cause what did you do to Dr. Dre to make him not wanna communicate with you anymore? Me and Dre talked. No, no, I'm talking about, it's been how long now? I went to his house in Malibu. How long? Uh, right after Straight Outta Compton. So that ain't long, no? No, no. 10 years, five years? My Straight Outta Compton came out and it's been eight years. So y'all still got a relationship? When I saw him last time I saw him in person, he was glad to see me. That's all right. I don't go to Beverly Hills, he don't come to Compton. That's all. But at the end of the day, are you proud to see what those guys did? I'm proud of these dudes, man. Because you got real out, you dealt with Wren and yo, how is Wren? I don't hear him anymore. Wren is the one guy I can't tell you nothing about. I don't know where he at. I do. When Wren was around me, I didn't know Wren. He didn't talk much. Dude, in my book, I broke down, each one of these guys, Wren's chapter is about a paragraph. Because he didn't really open up. Wren didn't, he may have come to the house. He's a private person. He may have come to my house, but he wasn't a standout dude. What about Yellow? Yellow's the one? Yellow's the one. He the one who had the porn on the house? You know, he had porn with... Uh-uh. You know, he was born in a Christian asshole. But don't matter, I'm just telling you what, just the history, you saying that it was a porn room in your house or y'all film. We had a bar. We had a bar. We had a bar watching that shit. What the hell is going on? He had a bar, he was a bachelor. He had a bar. We had a bar. No, understand this dude, understand this. Let me tell you this, this real shit, this real shit. One thing I learned about porn, it's the most boring shit in the world to watch. What? You would think it would be fun. Being made, it ain't being made. Why? Because it's not what you think it is. Stop, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. Move it, move it, move it, move it, move it. All right, don't come. What? Okay, and for me... How can they control all of that? It was before Viagra too. Yeah, how can they control all of that and keep it up? It's just, it's not a lot of times, but the same guy. Is it looking like? You had a stunt dick. Oh. You had a stunt dick. You had a stunt dick. Okay? No bullshit. Really? You got a stunt dick. I'm for the girl you don't have it. Oh, you know, girl, you don't need to stop us. Because, you know, if a brother worked with me four times that week, he got robbed. So he ain't working, he ain't working. He worked money through Friday, the weekend he done. Did he have to look like the other person? All you had to do was make sure that, all you had to do was just get that shot right there. Just the nuts. So Yellow was directing all that. Yeah. And he asked you, could he do it in your house? Yeah, start him off, yeah. And you was like, yeah, go ahead. My man's had some fun. Look, I'm like, I do shit for the story sometimes. He brought me some money and he brought me a few dollars. And I do shit sometimes just for the story, man, just for the experience. Wow, that's crazy. Again, I'm a bachelor. I ain't got nothing else to do. We got pretty girls running through the house, half of them was naked. And I never slept with that one up. I don't do strippers in this porn star. Really? I don't do strippers in porn stars. That's not my thing. I don't do... Even the prettiest ones. I don't do strippers in porn stars. That's hard. That's a slonzo, okay? I'll joke with you, I'll play with you, but I know that I don't do strippers in porn stars. Not knowingly put it that way. Correct, there you go. Because you never know what gives yourself together there. You don't know what she looks like. She just comes to church. Right, and that was the crazy part, man. You had some real, demure-looking women. Yeah, I can help you. I'm looking for DJ Yellow. Damn, she a schoolteacher, what? I'm here for work with Yellow. Are you really? Mm, damn. Oh, no. No, I'm an old-fashioned. Your hard drive. I'm a Catholic school dude, okay? So I have a perception of how women should be, okay? And I'm just, I'm sorry, I can't help that. They trying to pay their bills. They trying to pay their bills, but I'm like, damn, you? How much you need? Yeah. So did you? All right, so now these guys, one state, Rufus takes off. You, they lay easy on you. You give them a little information every now and then. You know, kind of consultation. You know, so when they scale like that, after police and all this stuff coming out, they didn't show, you wasn't shown a move during that part, but how did you feel about the travels and you were around during that part? Were you traveling with them? No. You just basically heard about it. I'm watching, one of my best friends, Adrian Gregory, was a tour manager, tour manager, there are road managers. Road managers. So I'm watching, and he and I were talking from time to time, and it just was, you know, I'm watching the stuff on the news and I'm seeing it and I'm like, damn, they going pretty hard on these fellas. But then I'm trying to figure out, are these guys really built for this? Yeah. Because you knew them. I knew them. And you knew that wasn't they. That wasn't, that wasn't they get down. You know, they weren't trying to be on, come on, it had to be easy because he seemed like he was the one that was. No, no, no, no, no, no. Easy wasn't even like that. No, dude, the movie come on, easy kicking the dough out, the wonder out. Come on now. Yeah. They should have put a cape on his ass. Okay. Look, that wasn't him. Easy was one of the most laid back dudes you want to meet. Me and Easy were sitting on the deck sometime while Yellow was in there shooting point on. I said, easy, how long are you gonna be easy as long as they pay me? Okay. He, I understand this, man. He was not trying to be a rapper. Right. He was trying to be a record label owner. Okay. And he, at the risk of blowing my own horn was following in my footsteps. Cause I'm a rapper, label owner, studio owner. I'm all that. Okay. At that time. Now I was like, he said, you know, Draco, well you try to be a rapper. Oh no, man. He was a shy dude. But once it took off. It showed that in the movie when he went in there and he didn't want to do it. Once it took off, he like, you gotta buy it and I'm gonna sell it. Right. Okay. He bought our money. Wow. He bought his money. He didn't know telling shows. He wasn't, you know, I'm gonna be a rapper. I mean, you know, he wasn't in no cyphers, no shit like that. He had the money to hide at that time with the best producer, had the most patience with him to develop, develop his style. And then they created a persona around that style. You got a little bitty dude. Or you gotta. How tall was he? Huh? Like five, four, five, five? He went tall. That's short. Oh yeah. They running everything. Yeah, but you got just a little bitty dude and you got all these guys around him. And it was an interesting picture. Okay. Made for an interesting scenario. And they marketed that whole situation. And then when the Rodney King thing jumped off, because fuck the police was fucked up at first, but then became a national anthem of the streets. Yeah, I'm so dead. Okay. When they first, when I first remember them being adamant about fuck the police, true story, me, Dre, LA Dream Team, Russ Parr, Bobby Jimmy. Yeah, yeah. Yella would all go out to Malibu every week and go shoot paintballs. We do a paintball when it first came out. We having a ball. We went in the gig and we were shooting paintball, shooting the white boys out in the valley. Every week we do this. We come back, we had so much fun. Easy. I'm gonna come out with y'all. I'm gonna come out with y'all. So easy, bought a paintball shotgun. About that big. Okay. He would carry around with him. Play in the backyard shooting shit, blah, blah, blah. So one day, easy, Dre, and I might be cute, but I'm not sure. Decided it was gonna be funny to ride down the street and stick this paintball shotgun out the window and shoot the cars. Wow. Now what they did not know is that between my house and audio achievements. The police living. You gotta get off on Torrance Boulevard, right? Terrence Boulevard is a highway troll station right there. Okay. Now onto what happened, how they got their attention, but they got jammed the shit up. Today they got killed. They came back to my house, damn they're crying. All of them. Man, man, do it like that. Yeah, they're lucky they didn't get charged. Do it like that, damn they're crying. Man, fuck the police, fuck the police, man. What the fuck is this, man? What y'all, what happened, man? All we did was, took some guns. I said, what you doing, what? Yeah. Lucky you ain't dead. Lucky you ain't dead. Oh, man, fuck them up. Hold on, I gotta ask them about the song. I wanted to just talk about that, the song. But with coming out with that song, I can imagine the type of brutality and the type of bullying and everything, not only from the police because of that song, but was there any black people who actually said to them, like, why you even put that song out? I said, I know her, but you had to understand, at that time, I had just come out of a situation with the police myself. Being a young black man that owned a nightclub at 22 years old, living in a neighborhood where everybody sold dope, except for him, I got a RX-7, I wear suits every day, I wear slacks and shoots. Yeah, you couldn't tell them you're not selling drugs. I can't tell the police how they're gonna do with that shit. Right. And they think the club, they think everybody's working for me. Right. That was the concept. Yeah, I know you're a kingpin. I ain't no goddamn kingpin or what? One of my buddies sell weed, everybody else, it was just starting to sell crack. One of my good buddies playing, he's selling weed, and we all played basketball together. So they arrested you? No, they never arrested me, but they gave me the motherfucking blues, though. I gotta ask you about Freeway, you talking about these drugs, he just left here. Did you remember when his run was going on in there? Hell yeah. You couldn't, you had to see it. Oh yeah. Did you know him back then? Yeah, right, me and Freeway are always cross paths. Freeway said, I come to the eve, I never went in though. He was cool, but he was on the other side of town. Most cats in that situation didn't want to be around crowds. Very few guys doing a lot of dope, that business did not want to be around crowds, so you don't know who's close to you. You can't see your back all the time. So he would say, I come out of the eve, I never went in though. That's right, so, but you remember the talks and you remember when he got busted? Yeah, it was big. Yeah, it was huge. That's the part where people are still searching their stories out. How big was it, like the talk in the streets? How big was it? You know, he had a house, right? By the Freeway, literally, a big old apartment that had converted to a house. Yeah. Okay, an apartment building. That's where he had all his houses. Right, and that's why they called him Freeway, because he had houses. By the Freeway. That by the Freeway. And everybody knew, but at that time, it was so many dope dealers. You know, he had all these guys, every neighborhood had a Freeway week type of guy. Now, we didn't know that he was all working under him. So you didn't realize that he was not? But he was on low key. He didn't even dread, just like he was never. You know, he did not look like... That person. Because back then, everybody had Mr. T starting to get on. As a dope dealer, you had to have the jewelry and the chains and the shit, you know? Not him. And he never did that. So if you saw him, if you didn't know who he was, even in the, I watched the police report. I mean, one of the police stories. They saw him going, coming and going, they hated dope, didn't they? Could he even fit your description? That's why it's crazy that he even ever got caught. Cause you would think that he would never get caught because of that. He was taught. People talk. People get caught, people start talking. That's the problem. That's a big problem. I just had to ask you about that because I know already that that was the thing that LA, they felt the vibrations, you know what I'm saying? So when you fast forward to like, looking at say, you got all these people, you got, you got Shills Knight comes in picture, but first I'm going to go back to 1G. You say 1G was at your house as a kid. Yeah, new kid. Okay, you got 1G, you got the two, one, three. You never seen Snoop Dogg's, did you? So he was from a different part of town. So that didn't come together at that time. Ornate down. No, no. So basically, but you've seen 1G because he was a brother of Drake. And that was Drake, yeah. Drake, brother of one that got killed in the movie? Yeah. All of them would be in my house. Yeah. So that was a real incident. Tyree, yeah, all of them would be in the pad. Wow. So you remember when his brother got killed? It was on the road. Yeah. Me and Tyree was actually just cooler. It's not cool. Just as cool as not cooler than me and Drake. Wow. He would sit around and talk to me all day long. They'd be in the studio. We'd sit there and kick it all day long. He went into the music. He went into the music. Wow. Man, did you ever think Drake, you knew his beats was different? Yeah. Drake always had talent. One thing about Drake, he at that time, it was another producer out of the East Coast, Herbie Lovebug. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Drake, I'm gonna be bigger than Herbie Lovebug. I'm like, that was the man to beat. Okay, he had his eye focused on Herbie Lovebug and I guess he beat him. He also came with it. Okay, so, but he would be dedicated to the studio and he would be in there. I'd be asleep some time. I went, what the fuck? My studio overlaps my bedroom. And I, well, I'm sorry, it's even my bedroom but you can feel the vibrations in my bed. It's like three o'clock in the morning. You know, he'd still be up there working. Oh, he'd fall asleep, wake up, start punching on drum machines again. What did you think when Shug Knight came into play? Well, Shug came into the picture, man, it changed the whole game because it stopped being fun. Was Shug Knight, I've talked to guys that say Shug Knight was not even a gangster. No, but he, he, he bought gangsterism. He was a football player. He was a football player. Everybody, people know he was a football player. No, he's not a gangster, but you bring gangsterism. Your money, you buy all the gangsters, you won't. He specialized in brothers out of the penitentiary. I was a gangster. So he was thrown out to the cell for the catch. You got money to pay people. So you, you say he not, he wasn't a gangster. He wasn't a gangster? I got, I got, you know, I've seen, I've talked to Shug before. He tried to intimidate me one day. What, what, give me the story. Why? We were at a Compton, a hotel in Compton. And it was a, a buddy was giving a conference there, music conference. And I was passing on my flyers for my new business, the Mr. Link Entertainment. And I was talking to a buddy of mine. I was talking to two dudes. All of a sudden, I'm talking to them. They just turn around and walk away. Like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay. And I turned, I feel somebody behind me, turning to Shug. What's up, man? You Lazo? Yeah, what's up, man? Yeah, man, I'm Shug. I thought, no, you are? Yeah, I heard you got beef with my people. Now I'm playing stupid. Who's your people? Dre and Michelet. They got no beef, man. I say, I got beef with your people. Y'all right there in Dick Griffith, but if there was a problem, I'd have fixed it. Right, right, right. Now he don't realize that the whole time, we down time, we at the lobby of the hotel, the whole time, I didn't reach out and grabbed his phone. Got my hand on the phone. I got my hand on his phone handle. Remember that movie with Joe Pesci, who up there and motherfucker with that phone handle? I finna reach out and touch his ass if this shit go left at all. Right, right, right. And he gave me a business card. If I took my hand off the phone, with the business card, I'm Shug, man. Be cool. That's it. Wow. But he tested me. And he saw you stood your ground. I stood my ground. And I think that's what people do. They wanna see if you gonna stand your ground. But knowing who he is and what he has under him, why wouldn't you be intimidated by him? Why wouldn't I? Cause I'm from Compton. I've been motherfucking testing me so we got a damn time that's ridiculous. You never let him see you sweat. So is there anybody that has ever intimidated you? Oh yeah, oh yeah. To what you couldn't leave your mother. I can't let you, I can't let them fuck it. I wouldn't let them tell them that shit. Yeah. I ain't Superman, I ain't stupid, okay? Ten boys just running you home from Centennial. Would you ever that? You know what, I got chased from Centennial. But I tell you what, I tell you what, I tell you what was crazy though. The same person that chased me with two or three cats, I saw him at Clark's Drugs and he buckled. He buckled. I ain't never been no gangster, okay? But I ain't no punk. Just happy, go lucky. I've been this way all my motherfucking life. And the only reason you didn't end up being a gangster, doing any or selling drugs or anything like that is because of your dad. Dad, and I had another hustle. My records became my hustle fresh out of high school. And if I didn't do it, if I didn't have the record, my dad is trucked with his lawnmowers and chainsaws and shit. I can do all kinds of shit. I'm a multi-talented individual. Since you were the hustle and you're in the music industry, you're in the music industry, labels and all of that, why do, why did all, okay, have you ever did a bad deal purposely to somebody? Yep, to somebody. And I've taken a bad deal just to get some money. I've taken, okay. Because I was like, you know, a lot of people knowing about all these bad deals, even back in the 360s and all of that sort of stuff. And you being in the business where you're giving out these deals, like, have you ever, and why? To understand this, in the beginning, we didn't know enough about the record industry to purposely give out a bad deal. Okay. Okay. We were just making records. We, records was a new way, I'm a dance promoter. Records was a new way to get, was a new hustle. You making for 75 cents, you selling for 250. Giving your people 50 cent, quarter, whatever the case may be. Whatever the cutting, whatever the deal is. Okay, when I first started making bootlegs, yellow was my DJ. I would go make the record, he would mix them up. I'd go press them, I'd come back, I'd give them a cut. Okay. And it was a good hustle. And we didn't know about publishing. We didn't know, nobody gave us no lessons on publishing. Nobody told, we weren't getting played on the radio. We was getting, we was underground mixers. We were selling them damn things directly to the stores. They would sell them to the public. What no distributor, what no, none of that shit right there. So if I make a dollar, 50 on the record, I give the artist, give my mixer, 50 cent on the record. That's a good deal. I sell 500 records, I get it through 250. Okay, or whatever, whatever, 500 records, yeah. That's 250, whatever the case may be. So he a happy camper. So we hustling. So was, let me ask you this, it's Compton. Cause I got friends, it's in Compton. Business wise, the business is over there. Is anybody helping anybody? Black business owners popping up. What's going on over there, man? Well, it's glad you asked me that. Currently I'm the president of the Compton Entertainment Chamber of Commerce. Okay. Okay, we work a lot of different businesses. There's a few different Chamber of Commerce's in Compton, but mine is based, mine focuses on the entertainment aspect of Compton. But because I'm an entertainment chamber, I get to interact with all type of other businesses. Compton has evolved quite a bit, but the news don't tell you that. Okay. Okay, that's why I started my channel, the Compton Entertainment Channel, to get the brand of Compton rebranded to something other than gang bangers. Dumb shit still happens, but dumb shit is prevalent everywhere. Dumb shit is popping up places never popped up before. We never had no shit like we had in Monterey Park where somebody going there with an Uzi, a 79 year old man going there with an Uzi and killed 10 people. That's some unprecedented shit. Yeah. So, but Compton is coming down. I've been with the sheriff a few weeks ago. He showed me the stats. Shit is going down. That's good. Okay. You don't see there's many gang bangers as you used to. I do a lot of filming in Compton at community events. You don't see gang, but you see families. Wow. Compton families interacting. But channel four, channel two, channel seven, they ain't there for that. I tell you that. That's why we got our own cameras to do our own story. Just like you're doing this right now. That's right. Compton got a story. In fact, tomorrow morning, I'll leave to go to New York for a week on some Compton business for this Harvard University study to help beautify Compton. So there's things happening in Compton that never happened before, man. And I want people to know about that. And that's why I have started the channel and the website. What's the name of the channel? My chamber is a Compton entertainment chamber, but the channel is a Compton entertainment channel. Okay. And what about your podcast? Podcast is called NWA, not without Alonzo. Hey. Hey, I love it. I like that. And I'm just, man, I just want to tell you, thank you for coming on Boss Talk 101 there. Appreciate it. We reached out to you. Shout out, DJ. Got a shot of him. Got a shot of how sick, you know, these guys are people that I link with to get to you, man. You came and you did us justice. We in LA, we couldn't have done it without you, man. Much love. And when we put it down on that Texas brand, I ain't gonna lie to you to decide we're gonna love it, man. I gotta ask you about Master P, though, because I deal with his people, too. So, like, what's the deal with you and Master P? You know what, me and Master P ain't got no problems. We did his first big hit, was Turn Off the Light, was based on Turn Off the Lights. And they did it backwards, okay? I didn't hear the record. I did a publishing deal, and they heard the record down south. Is this your record? I said, yeah. He said, well, let's take that 300,000 units. We gotta go get a check. No shit, go get it. So, they contacted his people and he used Turn Off the Lights to make Mr. Ice Cream Man, okay? And if you ever asked me in the beginning, the deal might have been different. But you used the record. It said 300,000 units, and it's already proven to be successful. The price went up. The price is enormous, the price is crazy. So, I ain't mad at him. I didn't show no disrespect with no love either, okay? I need all the publishing. I need my writers, I need my publishing. And it was a good deal for me for a while, okay? We took pictures together. He comes to Compton, but we never really hung out though. I'm a different kind of dude, man. I'm still old school. I don't do dope shit, I don't do gang shit. I just, if I feel like it ain't gonna work for me, I don't fuck with it. But how did you get to be in the straight? We got to be in the straight. And when you come to Compton, I'm glad to see, but we never hung out. He a business man. He a business man. Man, that's hard, man, so. I want to use some Lonnie Loops or some shit, you know. Hey, save, man, so, man, I think I got everything out there, you brother. I just want to say thank you for coming on the show. If you're up in Dallas, you got to come by our spot too, though. You got it? Yeah, you got to come through and see us. You don't never leave, though. You don't leave Compton, man. No, no, no, no, no. No, you don't be out of Compton like that. I'm going to New York tomorrow. Hey! I'm going to New York tomorrow. And also, remember, before we leave, I got to say this right here. Let's go. As the president of the Compton Entertainment Chamber of Commerce, one of my first duties is to get a street named after EZE and Compton. Oh, man. Okay? That's already in the mix. That's already in the mix. For the 50th anniversary of hip hop, okay? I'm talking, I've worked, I've talked to the city council. I've go before the city council and about another week or two go for a vote. And when they vote for it, because I've talked to all four members and everybody said they pretty much, look, you know, they want to make it happen. Only with three votes, but I got four people showed, I love it. Just in case. Just in case. And hopefully, between now and June, we'll have a street named after EZE. That's hard. That's big, that's real big, man. Yes, sir. I got to say, shout out to Money B. He didn't make it, because he said he had something to do. But if you get back before, on Sunday, I want you to put in his ear and say you need to go see Boston before they get out of Cali. I'll do that. You better go see them because they're good folks over there, man. You got it. Yeah. I know you be hollering at him. All the time, right? Just throw him on Monday. Yeah, call them in. No, man, what he missing out on, so I can get him before I get out of here. I need to get him. But man, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. Appreciate it. Say, man, it's been another great segment of Boss Talk 101, where the boss is talking. Oh yeah. It's good to see a couple working together.