The music world had a wide range of reactions when it came to the passing of N.W.A’s former manager, Jerry Heller, who died at the age of 75 on Sept. 2. The controversial businessman reportedly suffered a heart attack behind the wheel, which resulted in a car crash.
Those close to the mogul had a few reactions about his passing, including Ice Cube, his son O’Shea Jackson Jr. and E.B. Wright, the daughter of the late Eazy-E.
Cube stopped by Detroit’s Local 4, where he spoke very briefly about the passing of his former manager, whom he has been extremely critical of since leaving N.W.A, especially in the 1991 diss track “No Vaseline” (“‘Cause you’re getting f**ked out your green by a white boy…”).
“It’s just ironic that I’m here tonight with MC Ren,” Ice Cube said about his show in Detroit, which was on Saturday (Sept. 3), at Chene Park.
“With DJ Yella. We’ve come a long way. And to me, the passing of Jerry Heller is a thing that’s a part of life,” he continued. “You come here to pass away. We all gonna definitely reflect on our time with Jerry. The ups and the downs. And there you have it.”
Much like his father, O’Shea Jackson Jr. did not have much to say about Heller’s passing.
“Of course, he [Heller] had his moments where he was the champion for the group of N.W.A, and he does deserve credit for a lot of the good that he has done,” the younger Jackson told a cameraman at the airport. “But if it wasn’t nothin’ shady, it’d be way better…the good that he did do, I’m not gonna say it outweighed the bad. Rest in peace.”
E.B. Wright, who is Eazy-E’s daughter, spoke with TMZ about Heller’s passing, and she was singing a much different tune. While she was an advocate of the film Straight Outta Compton, which portrayed Heller in a negative light, she said that she supports Heller as a person, and doesn’t believe the film portrays him accurately.
“At the end of the day, I don’t feel it [the film] was 100 percent true, and stand behind Jerry Heller to the fullest,” she said. “He [Heller] was like a second father to my dad, so I’m gonna call him, like, another grandfather to me. He lived many years of people hating him and thinking wrongly of him, and people don’t know the truth…that takes a toll on a person who knows that they were very genuine and really had everybody’s best interest at heart.”