Apologies for the video quality, but it’s all we’ve got… It was a fun shoot – LOL. I think Dre says my name 50 times in the song. Dre raps on it and I sing and… drum roll… play flute!! Pure genius. We go up to his studio and I set up all my shit, saxes, flutes, harps and amps and he…looks them over and says, “How ‘bout the flute?” I’m like, “ok” but really it’s the one wind instrument I’m really not that proficient on. Dre was trying to beat the clock and if he didn’t… well LA County here we come… Apparently, he was under some kind of court ordered house arrest with some kind of electric bracelet around his ankle. He jumps out of the car and sprinting to his front door he waves me to come in. I sit in my car an hour and finally he rolls up in a brand new Corvette with a shit eatin’ grin. We set a day to meet at Dre’s house in Westlake Village. We are two of the most abused and trod upon peoples in history.” Hard to argue with that, especially when he’s holding a gun on me… You can read all about what Jerry thinks of things in his autobiography – Ruthless: A Memoir. I often commented to Jerry Heller how amusing I thought the teaming up of one the most notorious “Gansta Rap Bands” in history and one of the most notoriously ruthless Jewish booking agents in showbiz and Jerry would shrug and say, “It’s not so far fetched. Keep in mind Jerry and Gary are both white and Jewish. Gary’s cousin is the infamous Jerry Heller, manager at the time of NWA and President of Ruthless Records and the first thing he does is show me his gun. Gary and I first went to his cousin’s house in Westlake Village. What a chicken shit mutha fucka… sending his little girls over. I remember Dre’s white neighbors sent their little daughters over once, they couldn’t have been over nine years old, to ask us if we could turn the music down. We’re talkin’ one of the last bastions of upper middle class Caucasian World. Now if you’re not familiar with the Los Angeles city proper, Westlake Village is way out west on the 101 Freeway past the San Fernando Valley, past Thousand Oaks and just about as far outta Compton on so many scales, as it gets. So Gary calls and says Dre and Eazy liked the demo and they want to meet that night out in Westlake Village. But with these guys it was a “whole ‘nother universe” of shit I’d never heard. I was only ten years older than Dre and Eazy and from early on in my career I had hung with a lot of brothers playing in dives not far from the shit everybody thought was so funny in the movie The Blues Brothers but for REALZ with some Baddaassss muthafuckas with all the slang and jive that comes with the territory. Which now every white kid in America or the world for that matter knows means, “it’s cool.” Well, now you know the reason reason Dre raps on my album and I don’t. I was tryin’ to be dope… not a dope… or on dope… but dope. I had totally immersed myself in NWA records and any other rap shit I could get my hands on. Livin’ Life A to Z and The Company You Keep. Late Night Rendezvous with Dre and Eazy EĪ week or so after we’d met I’d given Gary a demo tape of a couple of songs I thought were rap. So they come back stage and the first thing Dr Dre says to me is “man, it’s not motherfucker! Its muthafucka!!!” So I say “I know that mutha fucka!!!! That’s what I’m saying muthafucka!!!!” We had a good laugh and a lot drinks and hit it off pretty well… I used to say, “hey you fuck!! and “muthafuckaaaaa!!!!!” in my act back then… a lot (still do). Gary was also a VP of Easy E’s record company Ruthless Records… and white… and Jewish. Gary had been their tour manager on their record setting Fuck Tha Police World Tour (just imagine what that gig was like – LOL). NWA had just exploded not only just on the burgeoning Gansta Rap scene but nationwide with Fuck Tha Police. In 1989 I was playing with my band Jimmy Z and the Soul Lips at the China Club in Hollywood to a packed house when my manager Gary Ballen came up to the stage and told me Dr.Dre and Eazy E were in the house.
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