Ice Cube has broken his silence on the long-running conspiracy theory that Suge Knight was responsible for Eazy-E’s death by injecting the late N.W.A legend with AIDS.
Cube finally addressed the urban legend during an appearance on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, where co-host Mike Majlak quizzed the rap veteran about the murky allegations.
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Hesitant to lend any credence to the theory, Cube asked several questions of his own in an attempt to dig deeper into the authenticity the story.
“How would [Suge] do that?” Cube asked. “And Eazy would never tell anybody that?”
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“No, I mean, Eazy didn’t even know,” Majlak countered. “‘Cause you just poke somebody, like, and they don’t even know. Maybe they were at a club or some shit.”
Still skeptical, Cube replied: “Nah, I think if somebody poke you with one of them goddamn needles, you know. You know. I mean, I’m just saying… just say this happened, Eazy would tell somebody, ‘This muthafucka poked me with some shit!’
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“Now, if he was unconscious and — I don’t know. It’s like… I don’t know. It just sounds… um… if Eazy would have known he got poked, he would’ve said something. If he didn’t know he got poked, then the conspiracy lives on.”
When asked if he would put such a heinous act past Suge Knight — a man with a reputation for stopping at nothing to either get what he wants or exact revenge on his enemies — Cube answered bluntly: “I don’t put shit past nobody.”
Eazy-E (real name Eric Wright) passed away aged 31 on March 26, 1995 due to AIDS-induced pneumonia. Just days before his death, he announced at a Hollywood news conference that he had been diagnosed with the virus. Eazy had learned of his condition weeks earlier after being hospitalized with a violent cough.
In a statement read out by Eazy’s friend and attorney Ron Sweeney, the Eazy-Duz-It rapper acknowledged that he had led a promiscuous lifestyle, fathering seven children with six different women.
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Eazy’s passing also came at a time when West Coast Hip Hop was at the center of a power struggle between N.W.A’s former label home, the Eazy-E-founded Ruthless Records, and Death Row Records, Suge Knight and Dr. Dre’s soon-to-be-dominant upstart.
After seeing Ice Cube leave the label over claims of being unfairly compensated despite being the group’s primary songwriter, Dre — N.W.A’s main producer — sought to follow suit. Knight allegedly strong-armed Eazy into letting Dre out of his contract with the help of baseball bats and lead pipes.
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As fans struggled to grapple with the reality of his sudden death, the combination of Eazy’s rapid deterioration and his supposedly violent rivalry with Suge Knight and Death Row allowed such a dark conspiracy theory to build steam.
Fuel was added to the fire in 2003 when Suge appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! following his release from jail and explained how injecting someone with AIDS was his preferred method of killing someone as opposed to shooting them, even referring to it as “the Eazy-E thing.”
“See, technology is so high, so if you shoot somebody, you go to jail forever. You don’t want to go to jail forever,” he said. “They have a new thing out. They have this stuff they called — they get blood from somebody with AIDS, and they shoot you with it. That’s a slow death. The Eazy-E thing. You know what I mean?”
Doubt has also been cast on Eazy-E’s death by several close friends, collaborators and even family members.
“I believe in my heart somebody did something to Eric,” B.G. Knocc Out, who appeared on Eazy-E’s 1993 hit “”Real Muthaphuckkin G’s” told HipHopDX in 2011. “Whether it was [his manager] Jerry [Heller], whether it was [his widow] Tomica [Woods-Wright], I have yet to really know the truth about it.
“But, for a person to have full-blown AIDS [that quickly is suspicious] … To be around Eric for the last three years of his life and he never had an episode like this — never ever — something is strange, something is real odd.”
In 2015, Eazy’s son, Yung Eazy, claimed his father was “killed” and pointed the finger at Suge Knight. He also suggested Ice Cube’s 1993 album Lethal Injection was a subliminal jab aimed at his former N.W.A groupmate.
“I’ve been known my pops was killed,” Yung Eazy wrote on Instagram. “His death never added up 2 what ppl have always said maybe they think we’re idiots blind to the truth idk….but 4 u new fans, youngsters & ppl who just don’t know much.”
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He added: “notice in #StraightOuttaCompton Eazy did not get sick until after the studio incident with suge and look how he acknowledged & admits on this interview with #JimmyKimmelinjecting ppl instead of shooting them is a new thing that’s done.
“Oh n let’s not touch the topic on Ice Cube naming his album ‘Lethal Injection’ #FreeYourMind #RipEazyE #EazyE #FuckSugeKnight.”
