Did Jerry Heller Actually Cheat N.W.A?
An independent jornalist writes....
Ben Westhoff , Contributor
I am a journalist who specializes in music and culture.
Jerry Heller made N.W.A famous. Either that or he destroyed them. It depends on whom you ask.
Heller’s death this past Friday brought his name back into the news. Obituaries noted that he was already a 40-something veteran of the music industry when he began managing N.W.A in the late ‘80s, and that he was the subject of much controversy. Indeed, as I interviewed the group’s members and associates for my book, Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap (Hachette Books, Sept. 13, 2016), people split right down the middle on Heller.
Many insiders assert his critical role in the development of N.W.A. There’s a reason, they say, the group became an international phenomenon, while other gangsta rappers of the era didn’t. Others practically spit at the mention of his name. After Ice Cube left the act in 1989 he suggested in his song “No Vaseline” they “put a bullet in his temple.”
The root of the dispute are assertions leveled by Cube and Dr. Dre – who left the group two years later – that Heller, in cahoots with Ruthless’ owner Eazy-E, did not give them a fair shake financially. “Ice Cube wanted to continue with N.W.A, but he just wasn’t getting paid,” Cube’s lawyer Michael Ashburn told Spin in 1991. “Look man I’m not dealing with Jerry Heller anymore. I don’t want him in my mixture,” Dre told Eazy shortly before leaving Ruthless, alleging that his royalty rates were too low.
It’s thus taken as gospel among many N.W.A fans that Heller was simply another in a long line of corrupt, white record company men. They haven’t hesitated to regale him with anti-Semitic insults. When Heller appeared on the Murder Master Music Show internet radio program in 2013, a caller referred to him as a “shylock.” He returned to the show a year later, and a different listener called him a “shylock” again. (The hosts were not amused.)
While digging through court records reporting my book, however, I noticed something curious. Neither Ice Cube nor Dr. Dre bothered suing Heller for financial malfeasance. I decided to investigate further in order to answer the question: Did Heller actually cheat anyone in N.W.A?
I had a chance to visit Heller before he died, in 2014, at his Calabasas, California home. Forty minutes West from downtown L.A. if there’s no traffic (although there always is), Calabasas features grandiose swimming setups, soulless architecture, and celebrities who inhabit both of those qualities. Then 73, Heller wore the effects of time and a combative career; his face drooped, his white hair had thinned, and he walked tentatively. He declined to let me turn on my recorder, but agreed to talk to me about subjects including the allegations of financial impropriety. When my grandmother died a year later, he expressed his condolences. I ended up finding him simultaneously cold and quite generous.
Not surprisingly, he insisted he didn’t steal a dime. “It’s the most ridiculous allegation I’ve ever heard,” he said.
Still, Heller didn’t dispute that, when Cube left N.W.A in 1989, he wasn’t exactly living like a rap star. In fact, he was still living with his parents in South Central Los Angeles—doing the dishes and everything. This despite the fact that he was a performer and songwriter on both N.W.A’s debut Straight Outta Compton and Eazy-E’s Eazy- Duz-It, both released in 1988, and which would sell more than five million albums combined. By the middle of 1989 Cube had received $32,700 in album royalties, and a bit less than that amount for performing on N.W.A’s first national tour.
This might not sound like a lot of money, but Heller countered that delays between album sales and artist payouts are common, and reasonably noted that Cube had profited millions from Straight Outta Compton in the decades since its release. David Kronemyer, a longtime record company executive who worked with Ruthless, seconded this assertion. “It takes a long time and most artists never recoup. Ice Cube did, in fact, recoup in this situation, it just took a long time,” he said. Heller claimed that both his and Cube’s legal teams audited Ruthless’s accounting, and found no irregularities.
Dr. Dre, meanwhile, produced platinum and gold albums for Ruthless artists J. J. Fad, N.W.A, Eazy-E, D.O.C., and Michel’le in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, generating tens of millions of dollars in sales. It’s unclear how much Dre was paid in total, but Heller told Rolling Stone Dre made about $86,000 from Ruthless in 1992, a figure that seems almost comically low. “[Eazy] took advantage of me not knowing the record business back in the day,” Dre said. He also blamed Heller for the skewed contracts he signed.
But considering he didn’t sue, it seems most likely that Dre was not being cheated, at least from a legal perspective. More likely Dre had simply signed an unfavorable deal, one that undervalued his contributions. It would make sense, considering that Dre’s assistant Bruce Williams said in his memoir Rollin' with Dre that Dre hated dealing with the business aspect of the music business. “He wouldn’t do no paperwork,” Williams wrote.
Still, legality aside, Eazy and Heller probably could have done more to accommodate their franchise player when he complained about money. Doug Young, N.W.A’s promoter, and a relatively neutral third‑party observer, thinks Ruthless should have simply torn up their agreement with Dre. “Let’s renegotiate these contracts,” Young believes they should have said. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Heller, in his memoir Ruthless, noted that he tried to sweeten the pot for Dre in other ways. He attempted to create a sublabel for him through Warner that, he said, would have paid Dre a $2 million advance. But the deal fell through. In the end, Dre bolted from Ruthless for Death Row, reeling off a string of hits with artists like Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur.
Eazy-E died of AIDS in 1995. Shortly before his death, he severed ties with Heller. Some who were close to Eazy claimed he told them Heller was engaged in financial shenanigans.
Ruthless rapper B.G. Knocc Out said Eazy showed him company documents. “He had records from where money was missing from the label—millions of dollars that he said Jerry was stealing from him,” he told HipHopDX. Yet, others insisted that Heller did no such thing. “Jerry was always Eazy-E’s protector,” another rapper signed to Ruthless, Toker, told me, adding that Eazy nonetheless blamed Jerry in part for Cube’s and Dre’s departures. (Heller denied the allegations.)
The 2015 N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton portrays Eazy’s widow, Tomica Woods-Wright, going through company books and looking for evidence of Jerry’s malfeasance. She is credited as a producer of the film, alongside Dre and Cube and others. Before his death, Heller was suing the filmmakers for defamation.
But even after his passing, Heller remains on trial with N.W.A fans. It’s hard to say he deserves this treatment, however. Though he may not have always been easy to get along with, with his help N.W.A became one of the most beloved and enduring rap groups in history. If he cheated or stole from any of its members, I’ve seen no evidence.
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