Eazy-E releases 'Boyz-n-the-Hood' — Ruthless Records' breakthrough single
Written by Ice Cube and originally intended for HBO (the New York group HBO rejected it), the track is recorded by Eazy-E and released as Ruthless Records' first single. The record becomes a regional hit, sells about 500,000 units, and establishes the template for the West Coast gangsta-rap sound that NWA would expand a year later on 'Straight Outta Compton.'
Why it matters
March 1987. Eazy-E released "Boyz-n-the-Hood" on Ruthless Records. It is the first single Ruthless ever put out and one of the most consequential single records in the history of West Coast rap. The song was written by Ice Cube. Originally Cube and Dr. Dre had offered it to a New York group called HBO. HBO turned it down. They said it sounded too West Coast. (HBO were correct. They were correct in a way that mattered.) So Eazy, who up to that point had been a Compton drug dealer financing Dre's records with cash, decided to rap it himself. He was not a rapper. He had to learn the cadence in the studio, line by line. The record went out. It sold about half a million copies. It made Compton a place on the national hip-hop map and made Ruthless a label that could fund the next year's album, Straight Outta Compton, with NWA. You can draw a clean line from this 12-inch to every gangsta-rap record that ever followed. The line starts in March 1987 and does not stop.
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