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The steady stream of cars, some of them blasting the booming bass guitar and screeching adolescent voice that made him famous, kept rolling slowly down Harvard Boulevard near the First African Methodist Episcopal Church during a funeral Friday for rapper and AIDS casualty Eazy-E.

A mix of more than 3,000 fans, mothers with their children, longtime friends, casual associates, gang members sporting their colors and record industry insiders watched as church officials and family members wheeled in a gold coffin layered with white roses and lilacs. The entrance line swirled nearly around the corner as security officials pushed back more than a thousand onlookers.

Many of the people who showed up at the service were teen-agers skipping school, hoping to catch a piece of history or get a glimpse of the celebrity spectacle as "gangsta" rap's 31-year-old godfather, whose real name was Eric Wright, was remembered.

Wright, a co-founder of the influential Compton rap group N.W.A., died of AIDS on March 26. In the late 1980s, N.W.A. won acclaim for painting rap's most evocative and fierce portraits of life in Los Angeles at street level.

Fans Brandy Hernandez and Danny Zaragoza, 17-year-old seniors at Santa Ana High School, drove for an hour Friday morning to watch the service.

"His death really scared me," said Hernandez, uneasily shifting her feet from side to side. "But I hope it will make more young people think about what they are doing out there."

In eulogizing Wright, the Rev. Cecil Murray waxed poignant and frank, urging the jammed church to rejoice in Wright's life but learn lessons from the way he died. While praising Wright's contributions to anti-gang efforts in Compton and throughout Los Angeles, Murray sent a message to those young people who feel invulnerable to AIDS.

"I know a little blackbird that sings," Murray said, pointing his finger at the coffin. "And his lyrics are, 'I want you to live. I want you to be careful. I want you to slow down.' "

In the audience, rapper Hutch (Gregory Hutchinson) of Above The Law, one of the best-known rap groups on Wright's Ruthless Records label, placed his head in his hands as the choir sang "Rough Side of the Mountain." Later in the service, Hutchinson's manager, Greg Cross, spoke of Wright's contributions.

"People will talk and say evil and vicious things," Cross told the crowd. "But your (Wright's) legacy will survive in a type of music that promoted reality and awareness and also by how you paved the way for brothers in the 'hood with your creative aspirations."

Charise Henry, who was Wright's personal assistant for four years, expressed her sadness through poetry.

"We ought to recognize our own fragility no matter how hard-core we are," said Henry, standing above photos of Wright, including a life-sized image.

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Calling Wright "Compton's favorite son," Compton Mayor Omar Bradley, who two years ago berated Wright and his associates for portraying black life and Compton in a derogatory manner, declared Friday to be "Eazy-E Day" in the city.

"Eric made Compton famous not just in California, but all over the world," Bradley said while reading the proclamation from the Compton City Council. "I recognize Eazy as a young man who grew up in the streets of Compton--and brothers and sisters, we know it's not 'easy' growing up in Compton."

Of the five former members of the once-world-famous N.W.A., only DJ Yella (Antoine Carraby) was present as a pallbearer in the services. Organizers did not know if two others--Dr. Dre (Andre Young) and Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson)--were in attendance. Cross said the fifth member, MC Ren (Lorenzo Patterson), did not want to attend.

"Ren just didn't want to see Eazy like this," Cross said.

The fate of Wright's record company is up in the air. Since his death, squabbles have erupted between his new wife, Tomica Wood, and the former director of business affairs at Ruthless, Mike Klein. Klein filed a lawsuit last week claiming that he owns 50% of the company. Wood maintains that she is the sole owner.

Industry insiders said the company is worth around $10 million, including its assets and a double CD compilation finished by Wright before his death. An April 14 Superior Court hearing is expected to send the once profitable company into a conservatorship until a judge can decide its fate.

After the service, as some mourners headed to the cemetery for Wright's burial, Rosa Allen, 23, stood on the curb amid the TV cameras and groupies taking in the scene. Allen, who had walked to the service from her house nearby, said the death of Wright--who fathered seven children by six women--was an urgent message to everyone, but especially young girls.

"A lot of these girls are not thinking about what they are doing," Allen said, running her hands through her long braids. "Their heads aren't on straight when they try and sleep with these celebrities. There's more to life than a one-night stand. They have their whole lives ahead of them."

Outside the church, as the crowd began to disperse, 19-year-old Michelle Thompson held a small circle of other young black women captive with words of caution.

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Eazy-E was never an easy study. Revered and reviled in and out of rap circles, the late rapper built an empire rife with controversy and contradictions that continue to reverberate 10 months after his death.

He was a humanitarian with an insatiable lust for money, a scrappy ghetto hustler who hobnobbed with Republicans, a cop-hater who supported a defendant in the Rodney King beating trial.

Rap entrepreneur Eric "Eazy-E" Wright was 31 when he died of AIDS March 26, 1995, 10 days after shocking the music world with news of his condition. As founder of the gangsta rap group N.W.A (Niggaz With Attitude), he helped revolutionize rap with the violence-spattered 1989 album Straight Outta Compton.

His legend lives on, but it's unlikely Eazy is resting in peace, with legal challenges to his deathbed decision to marry pregnant lover Tomika Woods and make her co-executor of his estate. Two other women who claim to have borne him children (he had seven by six women) also sued.

Str8 Off the Streetz of Muthaph***in' Compton, a new album of songs recorded during the four years before his death, is on Ruthless Records, the profitable independent label he launched in 1987 with proceeds from theft and dope dealing.

Survivors of N.W.A, defunct since 1991, said this week that they are reuniting for an album. The group's bitter split spawned the solo careers of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E and M.C. Ren. Yella's solo debut, One Mo' Nigga to Go, is due in March.

"It won't be the same without Eazy, but it's not like he's still alive and we're trying to do this without him," says M.C. Ren. "You got a million N.W.A clones. Only a few got their own flavor. We need a new N.W.A album to set everyone back on the right track of being creative."

Eazy's contributions - as a rap innovator or hero in the war on AIDS - are a matter of continuing debate. Commercially, he remains a heavyweight. His album is expected to measure up to its predecessor, 1993's It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa, which sold 2 million copies. First single Just Tah Let U Know, is No. 4 and climbing on Billboard's rap singles chart. Str8 Off the Streetz explores gangsta rap's familiar terrain in tales of misogyny and mayhem liberally punctuated with the n-word and f-word.

"He didn't change his style," says Yella, the album's associate producer. "He stayed the same from beginning to end, with nothing watered down. Everyone will remember him as a pioneer, like a guy stepping on Plymouth Rock. He showed you could come from nothing, start a company and sell millions of records. He made history."

Credited for business savvy, Eazy is less acclaimed artistically, though his reputation is taking on a posthumous sheen. He was regarded as less gifted than Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. A sharp talent scout, Eazy signed Cleveland's Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, 1995's hottest-selling rap group.

"Eazy basically added to the marketability of rap music," says Allen S. Gordon, writer for rap magazine The Source. "He brought it to the mainstream without radio play or promotion, and he opened doors so a lot of brothers from Compton and South Central could vocalize their experiences on record."

Gordon first encountered the short, Jheri-curled Eazy in 1986, when the rapper was selling tapes out of his trunk in Oakland. Years later at a rap conference, he again approached Eazy, who gave Gordon $700 toward his college tuition.

Eazy's generosity, especially toward children, was legendary. A portion of proceeds from his recent retrospective, eternal-E, goes to a pediatric AIDS charity. His dying request was for a safe sex campaign targeting black youth, which prompted Motown chairman Andre Harrell to establish the fund-raising Urban Aid 4 LIFEbeat. In disclosing his illness, Eazy said, "I would like to turn my own problem into something good that will reach out to all my homeboys and their kin."

"Eazy was more accessible to black kids than a Magic Johnson or Arthur Ashe," says Gordon, 25. "Ashe retired when I was in kindergarten. So Eazy hit home, though I'm not sure kids are being careful."

Eazy's wake-up call, which included a pointed reference to unprotected heterosexual sex as the origin of his HIV infection, "was less altruistic than it could have been," says Bill Adler, rap author and president of Mercury's new spoken word label, Mouth Almighty. "If you look at what he had to say, he was very careful to protect his macho image. He basically said, 'I'm dying of AIDS but don't think I'm a faggot.' It's a shame that he couldn't make a statement without worrying about the reputation of his sexuality. But I still think it was a brave thing for him to do."

Adler's praise for N.W.A is effusive. And selective.

"I give N.W.A all the props in the world, but the auteurs were Dre and Cube," he says. "N.W.A was unquestionably the first group to command respect for West Coast rap. It was urgent and artful and sent rap in new directions.

"Their records were like the great concept albums of the '60s, designed in absolute genius fashion. Cube and Dre created a cinematic texture to rap that had never been there before, like the most vivid blaxploitation films. Maybe it's no accident that it happened within shouting distance of Hollywood."

N.W.A's vengeful F*** tha Police inflamed parents, politicians and even the FBI, which claimed the song incited violence against police. Eazy drew heat from his peers when he attended a Republican inner-circle luncheon in 1991 and supported Theodore Briseno, charged in the Rodney King beating, in 1993. Eazy's response to charges of hypocrisy: Lavish donations to L.A. causes earned him an invite to the right-wing shindig, which he saw as a hoot. Briseno tried to stop the brutality.

His image wasn't helped by a feud with Dr. Dre, who dissed Eazy on The Chronic. Eazy retaliated on 187um Killa and again on a Str8 track, Wut Would You Do, recorded before last year's fence-mending.

"All the wounds are healed," says M.C. Ren, who appears on Eazy's tune The Muthaph***in' Real and will release his third solo effort, The Villain in Black, on Ruthless.

The rekindled ties led to the reunion talk. Eazy was the catalyst then and now.

"He was first, before all of us," says Ren, whom Eazy recruited from high school in 1987. "He had a record on the street and his own label. That changed everything. He hyped us up to want to make street records."

Ren's admiration extends beyond Eazy's entrepreneurial smarts.

"Back then, rap was only New York groups with big strong voices. Eazy wasn't like the typical B-boy. He had a distinct, little laid-back voice and nobody could copy it."

Regardless of how his fans or detractors perceive him, Eazy's closest friends remember him fondly. Pal M.C. Hammer's current album includes the touching Nothing But Love (A Song for Eazy).

"Eazy was the most caring person in the world," says Yella. "That's why I never turned my back on him. I was always there, till the day I put dirt on him." Yella dedicated his upcoming album to Eazy.

"N.W.A was real," Yella says. "We weren't talking about fairy tales. We talked about life in Compton. That's all we knew. But there's a thousand Comptons all over the nation."

Eazy himself was satisfied to have aimed a spotlight on the mean streets of L.A.'s long-ignored ghetto. On The Muthaph***in' Real, he raps, "It's a fact, to be exact. My tombstone should read: He put Compton on the map."

I'm not out to give the usual "he was a good man" speech that even Hitler would have received at a funeral because it's the PC thing to do. I write because, regardless of his faults, Eazy-E was a brave man. He faced societal pressure, government and legal attacks, even an assassination attempt, just to "kick the real." As a person, perhaps his success was limited. But the reverberations of his ground-breaking entrepreneurial work can be felt to this day. Such names as JJ Fad, Michelle, D.O.C and, of course, Bone first came through E's Ruthless Records label. Not bad for a man who dropped out of high school in the 10th grade (he earned his GED later).

E made a contribution to American society that will hopefully remain even after we have all gone to meet at the crossroads on the other side. He deserves our respect for that.

Maybe he did hurt others, but E also tried to help people, especially kids. Maybe he hoped to make up for his earlier wrongs; maybe he just wanted to quit contributing to the problems and become part of the solution. Regardless of his reasons, he cared when many choose not to. He deserves our admiration for that.

Maybe he made more than his fair share of mistakes, but E was a black man trying to make a life for himself when all the odds were stacked against him. He died a terrible death, yet from the moment of his revelation until the second some random doctor pronounced him dead, Eazy-E had already begun to set into motion a game plan to teach the children, whom he so greatly loved, to avoid the death trap he had jumped into.

Sadly, he didn't live long enough to do it all, but in his short time he seems to have done more in terms of AIDS awareness than even Magic Johnson, who is a far cry from impending demise, has since making that shocking announcement some time ago. Sadly, Eazy-E wasn't given the time to complete this mission, but at least he tried with all his heart. He deserves our love for that.

"I may not seem like a guy you would pick to preach a sermon. But I feel it is now time to testify because I do have folks who care about me hearing all kinds of stuff about what's up." "Yeah, I was a brother on the streets of Compton doing a lot of things most people look down on -- but it did pay off. Then we started rapping about real stuff that shook up the LAPD and the FBI. But we got our message across big time, and everyone in America started paying attention to the boys in the 'hood." "Soon our anger and hope got everyone riled up. There were great rewards for me personally, like fancy cars, gorgeous women and good living. Like real non-stop excitement. I'm not religious, but wrong or right, that's me." "I'm not saying this because I'm looking for a soft cushion wherever I'm heading, I just feel that I've got thousands and thousands of young fans that have to learn about what's real when it comes to AIDS. Like the others before me, I would like to turn my own problem into something good that will reach out to all my homeboys and their kin. Because I want to save their asses before it's too late." "I'm not looking to blame anyone except myself. I have learned in the last week that this thing is real, and it doesn't discriminate. It affects everyone. My girl Tomika and I have been together for four years and we recently got married. She's good, she's kind and a wonderful mother. We have a little boy who's a year old. Before Tomika I had other women. I have seven children by six different mothers. Maybe success was too good to me. I love all my kids and always took care of them." "Now I'm in the biggest fight of my life, and it ain't easy. But I want to say much love to those who have been down to me. And thanks for your support." Just remember: it's Your real time and Your real life.

07.28.1997

July 28 [14:00 EDT] -- Another salvo was reportedly launched on Friday in the legal battle over the estate of late rapper Eazy-E.

The Associated Press reports that Ruthless Records, Tomica Woods (Eazy-E's widow), and Ronald Sweeney are charging the rapper's former manager, George Heller, with draining excess profits from the rapper in a suit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The AP reports that the estate claims Heller created a hidden expense account for himself with Ruthless Records funds. The estate also reportedly accuses Heller of taking more than his share of profits from Ruthless, and of failing to share in the company's losses.

Heller himself had reportedly already filed a suit of his own against Ruthless on June 6 claiming that he helped the rapper build Ruthless into a successful label, and consequently was due 20 percent of the company's profits.

02.04.1998

The two record set called "A Decade Of Game" should be out on Eazy's Ruthless Records this Spring, with songs written after the rapper learned he had AIDS.