Suge Knight, Dr. Dre, the D.O.C., and Dick Griffey co-found Death Row Records

Why it matters

Death Row Records was founded in 1991 in Los Angeles by Marion "Suge" Knight, Dr. Dre, Mario "D.O.C." Curry, and the music-business veteran Dick Griffey, after Dre had walked out of Ruthless Records over royalty disputes with Eazy-E. Interscope Records distributed. What Death Row did in its first five years is essentially run the entire commercial conversation in West Coast rap. The Chronic in 1992. Doggystyle in 1993. All Eyez on Me in 1996. A Pac/Snoop/Dre roster that, on paper, looked like nothing else in the country at the time. The label also ran on a kind of management style that is generously described as enforcer-based and less generously described as criminal: extracting and renegotiating contracts at gunpoint, alleged ties to the 1996 Las Vegas murder of Tupac Shakur, Suge eventually doing federal time. By the late 1990s the label had collapsed under its own debt and legal exposure. The catalog Death Row put out in those first five years, though, is one of the most consequential five-year runs in the history of any record label. You cannot tell the story of rap without it. You also cannot tell the story honestly without the rest.