20 Years After His Death, Eazy-E Deserves a Spot on Rap's Mount Rushmore

By 1986, the genre, which nobody then called "gangA sta rap" had begun to sprout in L.A. by way of Ice-T's "6 'n the Mornin'," which was patterned after Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D's "P.S.K. What Does It Mean?" But there was no gangsta-rap label, and certainly no gangsta-rap genre. Eazy-E was an unlikely progenitor.