Inside Suge Knight's Scary Past

May 2024 ยท 1 minute read

In his 2006 memoir, Ruthless, late N.W.A manager Jerry Heller addresses Dr. Dre's controversial departure from Ruthless Records, which was allegedly orchestrated by Knight. 

Dre jumped to Death Row in 1991, even though he was reportedly under contract with Heller's label, which was co-founded by N.W.A's Eazy-E. Heller claims Ruthless Records let Dre go because Knight and his goons had allegedly cornered Eazy-E with baseball bats and a release form. That moment was dramatized in the 2015 N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton. 

Eazy E. supposedly didn't want to let Knight's actions go unpunished. "One day I came into the office, and [one of my clients] and Eazy were talking," Heller said in a 2013 interview with the Murder Master Music Show (via Music Times). "And I said, 'What's going on here?' And Eazy said, 'You know this guy Suge Knight?' And I said, 'Yeah.' He says, 'Well, I'm gonna kill him ... This guy's gonna be a problem, and I'm gonna kill him.'" 

Heller, who died in 2016 at age 75, said that he talked Eazy-E out of murder but later came to regret it. "I should've let him kill him," Heller said. "I would've done the world a favor. He would have done it, for sure. By himself."

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