In the end, it wasn’t a bullet that felled the gangsta rapper. It was AIDS.
The music world was shocked in 1995 when rapper Eazy-E announced he’d contracted the disease. Just one month later, he was dead.
Since his passing, multiple conspiracy theories have percolated, with many friends and fans insisting Eazy was murdered.
With the new N.W.A biopic “Straight Outta Compton” currently tearing up the box office, let’s take a look at the various theories surrounding his untimely death at age 31.
Suge Knight did it!
In the early 1990s, Eazy — born Eric Lynn Wright — had a nasty falling out with his N.W.A bandmates, including Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. The latter went solo, while the former joined forces with former bodyguard Suge Knight to form Death Row Records.
Rumor has it Knight had it in for Eazy. (Knight is currently awaiting trial after running down two men near the “Straight Outta Compton” set.) The feud go to bad that Eazy’s former manager, Jerry Heller, claimed on the Murder Master Music Show in 2013 that he had to talk Eazy out of killing Knight.
In a 2003 Jimmy Kimmel appearance, Knight seemed to suggest that Eazy was murdered.
While explaining to the host that he no longer needed to use a gun, Knight said, “See, technology is so high, right? So if you shoot somebody, you go to jail forever . . . So they got this new thing out, people sell them all the time . . . They get blood from somebody with AIDS and then they shoot you with it . . . So that’s a slow death, an Eazy-E thing, know what I mean?”
The Nation of Islam did it!
B.G. Knocc Out, a hip-hop artist and friend of Eazy, gave a blockbuster 2011 interview to HipHopDX in which he spouted all sorts of theories regarding his mentor’s death.
One involved the Nation of Islam. Eazy had aligned himself with the fiery sect, and at the time of his death, members of the Nation’s security detail were guarding his hospital room.
B.G. Knocc Out recalled one incident in particular.
“Before everything hit the fan with Eric and [manager] Jerry Heller, these brothers from the Nation of Islam from Chicago — some of [Minister Louis] Farrakhan’s right hand men . . . walked up in the [Ruthless Records] office . . . [They] stormed in the office, into Jerry Heller’s office, and told Eric to ‘come here.’ Eric got up and went into the conference room. They were in there for like two or three hours. And I swear, when they came out of there, Eric had a different look on his face. He seemed like he was shook up about something . . . And like a week or so later, he started firing Jerry [and the rest of Heller’s relatives at Ruthless]. He fired Jerry Heller. He fired Terry Heller. He fired Gary Ballen. And they were all family.”
Jerry Heller did it!
Ice Cube left N.W.A, in part because he believed Heller wasn’t giving him his fair share of royalties.
In the HipHopDX interview, B.G. Knocc Out said:
“The night before we go into the studio Eric had an episode with his bronchitis. He go to the hospital, [and] they kept him overnight. That next day he came directly from the hospital straight to the studio . . . I went into the hallway [and] the man was in there by himself, sittin’ on the floor wheezing, like, terribly. And I was like, ‘You all right?’ I sat down next to him, and he was tryin’ to talk, and he had this big manila envelope in his hand, pulling out these faxes and all this stuff. He had records from where money was missing from the label — millions of dollars that he said Jerry was stealing from him. And Jerry was sending him idle threats, faxes and stuff like that.”
The Jewish Defense League did it!
Prior to Eazy’s death, the FBI was investigating an extortion attempt against him (and Tupac Shakur) by the Jewish Defense League, a right-wing organization that critics say has been responsible for “terrorist attacks” and “harassment.”
The report stated, “On September 11, 1996 [omitted] reported that JDL, and others yet unidentified have been extorting money from various rap music stars via death threats. The scheme involves [omitted] and other subjects making telephonic death threats to the rap star. Subjects then intercede by contacting the victim and offering protection for a ‘fee.’ Source reported that ERIC WRIGHT, also known as EAZY-E, who owned RUTHLESS RECORDS, Woodland Hills, California, was a victim of this extortion scheme prior to dying from AIDS.”
The Illuminati did it!
Those with fertile imaginations have claimed the world is run by a small group of powerful people who have rigged everything from the Kennedy assassination to the Eagles winning a Grammy.
Illuminati believers point to this purported recording of Eazy’s “last words” as proof that he was trying to out the conspiracy.