Death Row Records

Founder(s):	Parent Label:	Year(s):
Suge Knight	Interscope/Geffen	[1991 - 2006]
Dr. Dre

Members:

Suge Knight			Dr. Dre			Snoop Dogg
Tupac Shakur			Lady of Rage			Danny Boy
DPG			Nate Dogg			Kurupt
Daz			RBX			Sam Sneed
Crooked I			MC Hammer			Eastwood
Bad Azz			Jewell			Soopafly

“We named it Death Row because most everybody been involved with the law. A majority of our people was parolees or incarcerated”

– Suge Knight, Vibe Magazine.




Death Row Records is a Los Angeles based record label under the parent company of Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope Records promoting local so-called ‘Gangsta Rap’ giving birth to the second generation music from the west coast that completely swarmed the international industry overturning any previous conception of hip-hop forever. Created by Marion ‘Suge’ Knight and Andre ‘Dr. Dre’ Young, Death Row started the careers of today’s most successful artists to date. Under the infamous sub culture of an already dangerous way of life, Gangsta Rap portrayed the environment of the inner-city gang mentality and Death Row was a major player in the Los Angeles war that saw more casualties than Vietnam. Hip-hop artists were reporters and storytellers of the conflict in their neighbourhoods and this image made their careers. But Death Row artists found themselves in the front lines ducking shots and documenting the affair. Death Row took a side all the while sitting atop of the music industry reigning far supreme over any well established New York label.

Founded in 1991, at a time that saw Los Angeles concreting themselves on the scene of hip-hop with the solo success of Ice-T, King T, Ice Cube and a group who stormed onto the scene disrespecting any current flow and temperament of the industry with their revolutionary style of street gangster portrayal, N.W.A. were the personification of gangsta rap. But at a time that saw them at their weakest with seeping cracks in the family, Death Row bullied their way onto the scene at the right time, with a gaping rift between N.W.A. members, Dr. Dre and Eric ‘Eazy-E’ Wright, the executive of N.W.A.’s label Ruthless Records, Dr. Dre left with label mate Tracy ‘D.O.C.’ Curry who introduced him to Suge Knight, a bodyguard of his and R&B star Bobby Brown and small talent manager of Vanilla Ice. A man with a building reputation of using strong-armed street bullying to conduct business, Suge was a Compton native like Dr. Dre and together with Dre’s musical savvy and already established name for himself and Suge’s prowess and influence they came up with the idea of instituting their own record label under Solar Records with CEO Dick Griffey.

Opening at Solar

Death Row’s seed was planted with help from Dick Griffey who fronted Suge’s entrepreneurial finances but there were still contractual ties Dre was under and the need for a strong cash injection for this new venture. Griffey, along with Sony Records assured Suge Dre would have work waiting for him if he could release him from Ruthless Records. Namely, the production for the Deep Cover movie soundtrack commissioned to Solar Records at the time. Sony evened pushed Suge $1million for Dre’s employment.

Suge Knight put the streets of Compton to play and took the executive role in ironing out these problems. With a string of isolated attacks on the offices and management of Ruthless Records, Suge orchestrated a meeting with Eazy-E at the Solar Records offices to sort out the contractual ties. With accompanying thugs, Eazy’s life was threatened bluntly unless he signed off Dre, D.O.C., Michel’le, and Above The Law. Without any compensation or hesitation the result was in Suge’s favour. This was to be Suge’s iniquitous street diplomacy of settling business affairs for the future.

With Dr. Dre under his belt, Suge had the power to create his own label. Together with defence attorney, David Kenner and his contact of a major west coast drug trafficker, Michael ‘Harry-O’ O-Harris and PCP dealer Patrick Johnson(both clients of Kenner’s) fronting a reported $1.5million of illegal gains a silent partner was brought in with the plans of using the organisation ‘Godfather Entertainment’(to be parent company of Death Row Records) for Harry-O to launder cash from the revenue of his drug trade while incarcerated in California State Prison at Tehachapi with wife Lydia Harris overseeing their investment. Dr. Dre was to be the face of Death Row Records and managing partner to CEO Suge Knight. Death Row Records was born. The west coast scene blew up beyond imagination.