JH: I think that tragically when you are in the middle of something like this, and people are starting to make money for the first time in their lives, and I mean REAL money. You don’t think that anything could really disrupt that, you don’t think that anybody would be stupid enough to ruin the roll that we are on, when you roll 12 straight 7’s. It’s hard to believe, although I am sure that is how Brian Epstein felt when the Beatles broke up for the first time. Ice Cube had a massive ego, there were people around that were telling him that he should be launching a solo career, they were doing that for their own self interest. At that time Eazy was the only one who had a solo record out at that time. While Cube was a lyric writer, he certainly was not the only lyric writer in NWA, or outside of NWA coz DOC was writing songs too. Literally DOC wrote more songs himself than Cube ever did. He wasn’t that important of a card for the group, when he started to cause problems, the band felt he could go on his way and it wouldn’t matter.
Now when it came time for Dr Dre, that was a different story. Every song that ever came out on Ruthless, Dre wrote the music. In rap which is an accessible type of genre, we are not talking about Jimi Hendrix, Babara Streisand, Neil Diamond, we are talking about rap, which is people talking to music. Basically what I have found over the years S1, I have found that most of the rap artists can write good lyrics, they tell pretty good stories. Almost everybody can rap although not everybody has a distinctive voice like Eazy or Dre or Cube did, most of them can rap. What separates the boys from men in rap music is the music. The reason that Dr Dre has been on the top of his game since 1985-1986, 21 years , when he was with World Class Wrecking Crew. He produced NWA, the World Class Wrecking Crew, Above the Law, JJ fad, , Eazy E, The Chronic, Eminem, 50 Cent, The Game. We are talking about a guy who has had a monumental career, you can’t take a guy like Dr Dre out of the mix, you could take Ice Cube out of the mix and never miss a beat. You can’t take Dr Dre out of the mix and not have a devastating effect upon our company both creatively and financially. Financially you lose the biggest asset of Ruthless Records, personally he was Eazy’s best friend and he was like a son to me. The incredible glue and talent that literally kept the bottom together of every Ruthless song, so you can’t lose somebody like that. It was devastating personally and professionally for Eazy and I, there were times that we were afraid that we would never replace that. We didn’t have to worry financially coz by that time we made lots of lots of money by that time. Then of course Eazy came back and re-launched his solo career and then we came back with Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony, we sold tens of millions of records...

S1: Now, just to pick it a part a bit. We are at the stage now where Suge Knight shows his face, obviously he gets together with Dr Dre. Lets talk about it the way Eazy explains it to you, the situation where Dre was asking him to come over to the studio. He goes over there where you guys call it the “Incident” and I call “The Set Up”. Explain that whole little dynamic and how Eazy E put that on to you.

JH: Eazy calls me the day after the set up and he calls me in the morning and related to me that Dre said come on over to the studio tonite and we’ll work this thing out whatever it is between us we should be able to work this thing out…So Eazy went over there and there was Suge standing there with 2 guys with lead pipes and they sort of trapped him in a room there was no Dr. Dre there and it was Constellation studios over there on Coindale which is now Babyface’s building…They basically got him to sign these releases under duress, they told Eazy that they were holding me hostage and they had somebody outside his mother’s house…I had anticipated that something like this happening so I told Eazy that it’s nothing something worth getting killed over so if something like this happens just go along with it and I’ll deal with it legally…

S1: Okay, okay…How did you keep things together at that time since it was so difficult and dangerous at that point?

JH: Well there is a couple of ways that you can deal with it…Either you can do like Vanilla Ice did…You know run and hide and give them everything…Or you can say hey I don’t like this but I’m going to deal with it and that’s what I decided I was going to do…Yes we were very careful at Ruthless in those days, we had lots of security people…We had Mossad trained bodyguards around to equalize the Suge Knight situation…So we were careful but we weren’t afraid…I grew up in Cleveland and I grew up with gangsters and being on the street and guns and a lot of tough guys…We just did what we had to do…We had a very valuable assets to protect not just against Suge but from the government also, so always have to be cognicint…And there was always a chance that they could take everything away and I wasn’t going to let that happen…

After the pass of Eazy, Jerry was cut out of the Ruthless Empire as he watched the Label he help build being torn apart. Jerry told me a lot during the interview, like for instance the fact that him and Eazy would talk 100s of times a day. He also commented on Eazy's death as being a "Devastating Blow"... "Who dies in two and a half weeks?", Jerry asked me as if foul play had taken place. He also confided in me that the reason for the Music Industry's sluggish sales was not due to "Downloads", "Majors Justify high prices that decimate sales, not downloading".

Jerry Heller is currently looking to rectify the problem of high prices by making quality Hip Hop once again on his new label "Street Life Clockwork Records". Jerry say's He's trying to make quality hip hop records, not just a cd with 15 tracks and only 2 are hot. A typical Street Life Clockwork Records album will run you roughly $7.99. Jerry is betting that dope hip hop at a dope price can quickly kick up records sales. He just may get this off once again....