Jerry Heller is best known for managing West Coast rap groups N.W.A. and Eazy E. He is co-founder and CEO of Ruthless Records (together with Eazy E). Over the years, Jerry Heller also managed War, the Average White Band and Marvin Gaye, R&B singer Michel'le and Chicano rappers ALT and Kid Frost.

Early Life and Career

Gerald E. Heller was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 6, 1940, the son of Dave and Hilda Heller. He grew up in the Shaker Heights area of Cleveland and attended Ohio University and University of Southern California, where he took a degree in business in 1963. A cousin in the Las Vegas lounge act called the King's IV got him an introduction to contacts in the agenting world, and during the Sixties and Seventies Heller became one of the top rock-and-roll agents in the business, importing Elton John and Pink Floyd for their first major American tours, representing (in additon to the artists named above) Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Boz Scaggs, The Grass Roots, The Standells, The Guess Who, Joan Armatrading, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ike & Tina Turner. Van Morrison, and Crosby-Nash. Heller formed his own agency with partner Don Fischel, and began managing artists.

Managing the Rise of West Coast Rap

In the 1980s, Heller began managing acts on the nascent Los Angeles hip hop scene, many of whom recorded out of Macola Records in Hollywood. He managed both C.I.A. ("Cru in Action"), in which Ice Cube was a member, and the World Class Wreckin' Cru, which numbered as members both Dr. Dre (Andre Young) and DJ Yella (Antoine Carraby). On March 3, 1987, he met a Compton rapper named Eric Wright, Eazy-E, and became the general manager of Eazy's label, Ruthless Records. Heller helped mastermind the climb of Ruthless to the top of the West Coast rap world.

Heller managed the meteoric rise of Ruthless's most pupular act, N.W.A., "niggaz with attitudes," which brought gangsta rap to heights of popularity never before achieved. Behind the brilliant production of Dr. Dre, the supergroup included Eazy, Dre, Cube, Yella, Arabian Prince (Kim Nazel, who later dropped out) and MC Ren (Lorenzo Patterson). Under the direction of Heller and Eazy, Ruthless Records had six platinum releases across three years: Supersonic (J.J. Fad), Eazy-Duz-It (Eazy-E), Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A.), Nobody Does It Better (The D.O.C.), Michel'le (Michelle Toussaint) and Efil4zaggin (N.W.A.). Chris Rock was asked in Rolling Stone’s “Hip-Hop 2005” special issue to name the top twenty-five rap albums of all time. N.W.A’s Ruthless release Straight Outta Compton was Rock's choice for number one. “Nothing has ever been the same since they came,” Rock writes. “It was kind of like the British Invasion for black people.”

After N.W.A.: Author, Teacher, Music Manager

Under manifold pressures, N.W.A. broke up, with Ice Cube and Dre departing and aiming vicious dis raps at Heller, Ruthless and Eazy. But Ruthless went on to release Bone Thugs-n-Harmony's platinum hits of the mid-1990s, before the era came to a tragic close with Eazy-E's death in March 1995. Heller continued to work in rap, promting the rise in Hispanic hip-hop at Hit-a-Lick Records.

Jerry Heller's memoir, Ruthless, written with Gil Reavill, is published by Simon & Schuster/Simon Spotlight Entertainment. He teaches a course on the music business at U.S.C.

Heller is married to the former Baywatch actress Gayle Steiner, and lives in Calabasas, California.

External links

• Ruthless: A Memoir, Jerry Heller and Gil Reavill. ISBN 1416917926.
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1060397/bio

Living people | Year of birth missing | N.W.A. | Jewish-American businesspeople | American music industry executives