Eazy-E dies of AIDS complications

Why it matters

Eric Wright, who recorded as Eazy-E and ran Ruthless Records, died on March 26, 1995, of AIDS-related complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 30. He had publicly announced the diagnosis on March 16, ten days before his death. The death of Eazy-E in 1995 is one of the most consequential individual deaths in the business history of rap. Eazy was not just the most visible member of NWA. He was the financial architect of the entire Ruthless operation, the guy who had funded the early Dre productions out of cash he was making from independent street-level sales, the man whose specific business instinct had built the West Coast gangsta-rap label structure. His death also reset the long-running NWA-era beefs: Dre and Cube had been at war with him through 1994; in his last weeks, both of them visited him in the hospital and patched the long-running disputes. He was 30. The label survived him under his widow Tomica Woods-Wright. The catalog he built between 1987 and 1995 remains one of the most consequential five-year stretches in any genre. You should know what he made happen.