{"id":43794,"date":"2019-10-18T23:35:48","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T03:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=43794"},"modified":"2019-10-18T23:35:48","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T03:35:48","slug":"flashback-from-huffpost-kept-outta-compton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/flashback-from-huffpost-kept-outta-compton\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback From HuffPost: Kept Outta “Compton”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been republishing all my old Huffington Post pieces on this blog, because they could vanish at any moment from HuffPost. You never know about archives these days. This story is from four years ago<\/a>, after the N.W.A. movie Straight Outta Compton<\/em> came out. The movie depicted five group members — Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cub, MC Ren, and DJ Yella.<\/p>\n

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It nagged at me that the cover art for the original 1988 Straight Outta Compton<\/em> album showed six guys.<\/p>\n

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If this was supposed to be a group-origin story, where was No. 6<\/a>? I figured I had to answer my own question and that’s why I tracked down Arabian Prince. I interviewed him over the phone, but I’m happy to say MrB and I got to meet him in person in 2016. <\/p>\n

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MrB and I with Arabian Prince.<\/p><\/div><\/center> <\/p>\n

Learn about Arabian’s view on being erased from the movie; his memories of creating “Supersonic” for JJ Fad; and his business role model:<\/p>\n

Kept Outta \u201cCompton\u201d: N.W.A\u2019s Arabian Prince Has No Regrets
\nBy Wendy Brandes
\n09\/08\/2015 10:13 am ET Updated Sep 07, 2016<\/a><\/center><\/strong><\/p>\n

Arabian Prince says he\u2019s not angry, but he knows people who are. Although he was one of the founding members of the rap group N.W.A, he was left out of the hit movie Straight Outta Compton<\/em> and, as a result, people are seeking him out on Facebook to vent. \u201cI\u2019ve got hundreds of people complaining and they\u2019re more mad than I am,\u201d he says, \u201cThe people I went to see the movie with … they\u2019re mad!\u201d<\/p>\n

During a phone call from his home in Marina del Rey, Calif., Arabian \u2014 born Kim Nazel \u2014 acknowledges that it doesn\u2019t \u201cfeel good\u201d to be \u201cerased\u201d by the movie, but muses, \u201cIf people want to change history, they\u2019re going to do it. People have changed history since the Bible. We don\u2019t know what the real story of the Bible is.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the real story of N.W.A, Arabian says, \u201cMaybe for 50% of the [movie] scenes, I was there in real life, on stage, or in the studio.\u201d He says a lot of N.W.A\u2019s early music production was done with his equipment.<\/p>\n

Arabian met Andre Young, now the music mogul Dr. Dre, in the early 1980s, while both were DJs in the West Coast electro music scene. (Arabian describes electro \u2014 the forerunner of today\u2019s electronic dance music \u2014 as an up-tempo blend of Parliament Funkadelic, Prince and the German electronic-music band Kraftwerk.) Arabian grew up in Compton, Calif., surrounded by music: an only child with a pianist mother, a bass-playing stepfather, and a funk-loving uncle. His father was a talk-radio DJ at KACE-FM, and, as a teenager, Arabian would hang out in the control room and mix music.<\/p>\n

That led him to DJing and producing records. One day, while \u201cmessing around in the studio,\u201d Arabian whipped up the electro classic \u201cSupersonic,\u201d with the female rap group J.J. Fad, and released it independently. (Years later, the song was sampled in two platinum-selling records: Fergie\u2019s 2006 \u201cFergalicious,\u201d and Eminem\u2019s 2013 \u201cRap God.\u201d Arabian sued for his share of the royalties for \u201cFergalicious.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But electro was starting to evolve \u201cbecause of our life situations in the hood,\u201d says Arabian. \u201cEarly on it was all about the partying and the girls and the freaks in the club,\u201d but growth in gang activity made big DJ parties unsafe. Plus, young black people in cities like Compton felt increasingly targeted by the police. Arabian and Dre \u201chad met Eazy-E [Eric Wright], who was the neighborhood pharmaceutical technician,\u201d says Arabian with a laugh. \u201cHe was already on the street.\u201d With the addition and influence of Ice Cube [O\u2019Shea Jackson], MC Ren [Lorenzo Patterson] and DJ Yella [Antoine Carraby], the hardcore-rap N.W.A was born.<\/p>\n

In 1987, N.W.A released its debut single, \u201cPanic Zone.\u201d Arabian was a co-writer and vocalist. When Eazy-E and music manager Jerry Heller formed Ruthless Records that year, Arabian provided a gold-record hit by re-releasing \u201cSupersonic\u201d on the label. \u201cPeople said that record was the record that allowed Eazy to open his first bank account,\u201d Arabian says. \u201cI put Dre and Yella\u2019s names on it as co-producers just because we were a family, even though I did the record by myself.\u201d <\/p>\n

What started out feeling like a family turned into a business under Heller \u2014 one with opaque finances, according to Arabian: \u201cJerry took control and kind of had excuses for everything.\u201d In the movie, it\u2019s Ice Cube who first raises questions about money, accusing Heller of not paying the group properly and then quitting over the dispute. (Dre later leaves Ruthless for the same reason.) In real life, Arabian says, \u201cI was the one that was yelling and screaming about royalties. I was a solo artist first so I knew what royalty statements were. I knew that when you sell this many records, every quarter you get a statement, you look at that statement, you see how much money came in and you share the money. That wasn\u2019t happening.\u201d He also says they weren\u2019t fully paid for touring.<\/p>\n

As a result, Arabian quit N.W.A just prior to the 1988 release of its platinum-selling studio album \u2014 and the movie\u2019s namesake \u2014 Straight Outta Compton<\/em>. Before he left, he recorded the electro track \u201cSomething 2 Dance 2\u201d and posed for the album\u2019s now-iconic cover. (Going counter-clockwise, Arabian is the second person from the top, between Ice Cube and Yella.) <\/p>\n

Arabian says people sometimes ask if he feels \u201cstupid\u201d to have left N.W.A right when it was \u201cblowing up.\u201d He responds with questions of his own: \u201cWhat does \u2018blowing up\u2019 mean? What does the fame side mean if I ain\u2019t getting paid?\u201d When he speaks about the music industry at events such as the Red Bull Music Academy, he has this advice for aspiring artists: \u201cThe first thing I tell people is take care of your business. Make sure you copyright your stuff, make sure you get into one of the performance societies like ASCAP, do your research. When we were young there was no Internet … now everything and anything is on the Web that you want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interestingly, he says he \u201cstill talks\u201d to Heller. (He also stays in touch with Ren \u2014 \u201ca helluva emcee\u201d who \u201cdidn\u2019t get his just due in the movie\u201d\u2014 and Yella.) \u201cI didn\u2019t have a problem with [Heller] once I figured out what was going on … but I\u2019m not going to sit around and let you keep manipulating business in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in the movie,\u201d Arabian says, \u201cthere\u2019s a scene where Cube is sitting there and the reporter asks, \u2018How does it feel to have all this money?\u2019 and Cube couldn\u2019t hardly answer! He\u2019s like, \u2018Uh, I buy curl activator and Raiders clothes\u2019 because that\u2019s probably all he could afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arabian laughs and says, \u201cWe\u2019re supposed to be gangstas? We\u2019re supposed to be hardcore gangstas \u2014 N.W.A \u2014 and we\u2019re getting ripped off on our own money by our own people? Come on! I\u2019m out.\u201d<\/p>\n

After N.W.A, Arabian put out his first solo album, Brother Arab<\/em>, in 1989. \u201cIt was alright. No super-duper blow-up hit, but I made my own money.\u201d Then he followed an interest in technology into a new career: \u201cI taught myself how to do animation and programming and got into the whole gaming thing.\u201d Making contacts through graphics and technology conventions, he moved into special effects, working on movies including The Addams Family<\/em> (1991), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers<\/em> (1995), and Contact<\/em> (1997). More recently, he started a virtual-reality company. He goes to 10 or 12 technology conventions a year to keep up to date. He also DJs in the U.S. and does European tours: \u201cWe still do the electro stuff. They\u2019ve never stopped loving it in Europe, so I\u2019ve been performing that forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arabian, who turned 50 this year, keeps in shape by playing basketball seven days a week \u2014 twice on Mondays. He plays golf as well. He\u2019s a video-game fan, though his expertise has spoiled him for \u201cshoot-\u2018em-up\u201d games: \u201cWhen you\u2019re really good it becomes boring because you have such good aim, and I\u2019m just killing people!\u201d He prefers role-playing games like Borderlands<\/em>, and raves about South Park: The Stick of Truth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The lesson to be drawn from his career, Arabian concludes, is that \u201cyou can\u2019t pigeonhole yourself.\u201d He cites Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, as good role model. \u201cI looked at him early on going from a just a little magazine, to a record store, to Virgin Records and then Virgin Mobile and then airplanes and trains and this cat now\u2019s got his own Virgin space thing [Virgin Galactic].\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if he would be interested in a little space tourism himself, Arabian exclaims, \u201cHell yeah! I\u2019d be the first one!\u201d He adds, \u201cThere\u2019s so much more in the universe than here, than California, and the United States, and this world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been republishing all my old Huffington Post pieces on this blog, because they could vanish at any moment from HuffPost. You never know about archives these days. This story is from four years ago, after the N.W.A. movie Straight Outta Compton came out. The movie depicted five group members — Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice…<\/p>\n

Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[726,564,568,86,42],"tags":[2194,2193,2192],"class_list":{"0":"post-43794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art-entertainment","8":"category-huffington-post","9":"category-journalism","10":"category-movies","11":"category-music","12":"tag-arabian-prince","13":"tag-n-w-a","14":"tag-straight-outta-compton","15":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43794"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43806,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43794\/revisions\/43806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}