Following an announcement last week, Compton, California leaders honored Eric “Eazy-E” Wright by renaming a street after him in his hometown. On Wednesday (Nov. 22), Mayor Emma Sharif, City Council officials and family members of the late rapper led an official ceremony for the newly minted Eazy Street, which can be found on the 100 block of Auto Drive South.
“Compton has a lot of history, but nobody knows about it. I figured the most recent history is hip hop history,” said Compton Entertainment Chamber of Commerce President Alonzo Williams, who helped to spearhead the renaming and briefly spoke to ABC7 Los Angeles at the event. “Being [that] this is the 50th anniversary of hip hop, I thought it’d be a great idea to approach the City Council [and] talk about possibly doing this, and they loved the idea.”
Eazy-E’s son, Eric Darnell Wright, also spoke to reporters about the momentous occasion. “My father finally got what he deserves, a monumental street in the city he put on the map,” he expressed. “It’s a long time coming, but again, I always say it’s God’s timing.” Currently, Eric Darnell follows in his father’s footsteps as an artist that records under the moniker Lil Eazy-E. He liberated The Legacy alongside Tha Dogg Pound’s Daz Dillinger back in March.
Eazy-E rose to prominence as part of N.W.A. with Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella and Arabian Prince. Together, the Compton-based collective put the spotlight on gangsta rap and the West Coast hip hop scene with their debut LP, Straight Outta Compton, in 1988. Eazy-E would also find success as a solo artist with Eazy-Duz-It in the same year. In 1995, he tragically succumbed to complications from AIDS only a month after learning of the diagnosis. A sophomore project, Str8 off Tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton, was posthumously released several months later.