A Quote by Ice Cube
'Boyz-n-the-Hood' was actually supposed to be written for Eazy's group. He had a group out in New York called Home Boys Only, called HBO. One of them looked like LL Cool J. Eazy wanted to write a song for them, a street song, like what we were doing on the mix tapes. So when I wrote it, it was too West Coast for them.
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Two records put me over the top with hip-hop. One of them was 'Planet Rock,' and the other had no lyrics - it was called 'Numbers,' from a group called Kraftwerk. Every kid in the 'hood in New York and New Jersey was popping, locking, and breaking to that record. It was the hottest track on the street at the time.
If you had no Eazy-E, you got no N.W.A., no Dr. Dre, no Ice Cube, no Tupac Death Row years... no Bone Thugs. No Aftermath, no 50 Cent, no Eminem - the way we know them. The branch that is called Eazy-E on the Hip Hop tree is massive.
I grew up in the time just when cassettes were waning and CDs were growing. And so mix tapes - and not mix CDs - mix tapes were an important part of the friendship and mating rituals of New York adolescents. If you were a girl and I wanted you - to show you I like you, I would make you a 90-minute cassette wherein I would show off my tastes. I would play you a musical theater song next to a hip-hop song next to an oldie next to some pop song you maybe never heard, also subliminally telling you how much I like you with all these songs.
Da Pak was a group out of Chicago. It was a put-together group. We actually met for the first time at this showcase. They were like 'Yo, you should do a song together.' So we did. It just so happened that the name of the song was 'Wolf Pak.' They said, 'Y'all should be a group called Da Pak, and here's a record deal.'
Eazy-E was not a rapper! He was a stone cold businessman. EAZY use to say that out of His own mouth. But one thing that he did have when it came to his artistry , is that voice. At least Eazy-E admitted he had ghost writers & people that wrote for him. Some of today's super star rappers will not admit they have ghost writers. Eazy-E always kept it 1000.
Well, Neighbours wanted to do a song on the show, and they asked me what songs I had. I told them I'd just written this song, called Born to Try, and I had just gone overseas and spoken to some people from Song about it.
When I originally wrote "Jealousy," it was more like an exercise to try to write a girl-group kind of pop song. It was really contrary to most of the material I'd ever written. I didn't pay much attention to the song after I'd recorded it. I didn't really perform it at all the last 20 years. When it came time to make the new record, I decided to make peace with the song and have fun with it.
When I wrote for Eazy, I wrote for the character. Everybody knew Eazy loved girls, so I would make him funny, even though it was somewhat misogynistic.
I put a song out for fun, from 'Lucky Them'... I wrote another one called 'Love Song.' I really liked that.
The first song I wrote was called "You" and it was a love song about somebody who didn't even exist. I remember them all because I used to always write terrible poetry. I keep all my notebooks.
Safety lies in catering to the in-group. We are not all brave. All I would ask of writers who find it hard to question the universal validity of their personal opinions and affiliations is that they consider this: Every group we belong to - by gender, sex, race, religion, age - is an in-group, surrounded by an immense out-group, living next door and all over the world, who will be alive as far into the future as humanity has a future. That out-group is called other people. It is for them that we write.
Actually think anybody ever approaches writing any song, I think the song approaches them, truth be told. Usually what happens is that a song arrives and afterwards you say that "I wrote the song," and it's not actually true; they find you, they write themselves.
The difference between EAZY E the artist and Eric Wright the human being, was two separate worlds apart. Behind closed doors, Eazy-E was a real generous giver, A true philanthropist.In 1991, I remember when Eazy-E drove out to Fontana California to drop off $20,000 cash because my twin boys were having hernia problems & and slight medical issues because of being born premature. He stopped his meeting & drove to give me the cash for my twins operations.
I love these dudes, but I don't know what they're doing with all that facial hair these days. There's a lot of peach fuzz going on. They called me up to go to a Kanye West concert, and I was like 'hold on I'll call Kanye.' So I called him and they got into the show, and I called Kanye later and said, 'Yo did you see my dudes from Panic! at the show?' and he was like 'Nah they mst not have been dressed like they were from the 1700's'. But I back them. They have their own unique style, which is cool.
All you gotta do is think of the song in your head. And it doesn't matter whether you can play it or not, you can get somebody to play it. With songs I've written, there's a song called "The Statue", which I can't play. There are songs that I've written that I've actually just hummed on - there's a song on one of the albums they have there on the Internet called "My Love Was True" and it's almost operatic. I can't play it. But I can sing it.
Sometimes I'll write a song first and then I'm like, "Oh this person will be great on this song." But there are some artists I know what want, like off the top I knew I wanted Brandy and Faith Evans. Their music is like the soundtrack to my life, so it was a personal thing for me. So once they said yes, I wrote songs specifically for them.
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