Hip-hop has been extremely slow to address the topic of the AIDS epidemic in America. I guess it’s not sexy or does not sell enough records to be a topic that is constantly beat into our heads like most of the sounds we hear today bumping down the street or on our television screens. The hip-hop community has lost at least three of its own to this disease who were members of legendary groups, Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 in 1989, Anthony “Sugar Shaft” Hardin of X Clan and Eric “Eazy E” Wright of N.W.A., both in 1995.
In 1995, amfAR stated that AIDS related deaths had reached an all time high. AIDS in 1995 had also become the leading cause of death for all Americans ages 25-44. In accordance with these stats, it should have been no wonder that living your life as a “rock star” was beyond dangerous. In Eazy’s case, he did not run from danger, he felt he had to face it head on and in some cases, run towards it.
As N.W.A.’s status grew in the late 1980s, so did Eazy’s pockets and sexual appetite. Once they began to tour, the group’s goal was not only to rock and stun the crowd, but to conquer every woman they could. Eazy hated condoms and regularly admonished the other guys for using them. He believed condoms weren’t manly and were for sissies. He told the guys that if they were to get a woman pregnant, no problem, he would take care of it, as it was their right to procreate as much as they could. Eazy went onto father seven children by six different women.
Eazy got the guys to believe, at the time, that they needed to “feel” all their loving and to follow his example, which they reluctantly did. The group’s mega stardom caused Eazy to think he was indestructible. One of his main concerns on tour was any of them sleeping with an ugly girl, to which he coined the phrase, “taking a trip to Japan” because that meant you slept with Godzilla. Eazy was a notorious lothario up until his admission into Cedars Sinai Medical Center for what he thought was asthma. The other members of N.W.A. were shook when Eazy was diagnosed as having full blown AIDS and realized all that “fun” they had could very soon catch up to them one by one.
Dr. Dre cried at Eazy’s bedside, probably not just because it was his friend and mentor, but because he too saw himself. Eazy left this earth at the tender age of 31 and if he was still here today, he hopefully would use his lofty status in the rap world to educate young people about why they need to protect themselves against the dangers of AIDS/HIV.
-Artemus Gordon
