
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 27, 1995                   TAG: 9503280029
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Short

RAPPER DIES OF AIDS

Singer Eazy-E, whose pioneering ``gangsta'' rap group N.W.A. brought the rawness of the inner-city to white suburbia, died Sunday of AIDS complications. He was 31.

The rapper, whose real name was Eric Wright, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was hospitalized Feb. 24 with asthma, the hospital said in a news release.

In announcing his condition on March 16, Wright said he didn't know how he contracted AIDS but wanted to warn ``all my homeboys and their kin.'' His hospitalization prompted so many well-wishing telephone calls the hospital needed to hire more operators.

A Compton-born former drug dealer who claimed to have fathered seven children by six mothers, Wright brought a brutal vision of Los Angeles-area ghetto life to popular art.

N.W.A., which stands for Niggers With Attitude, scored a hit in 1988 with ``Straight Outta Compton,'' which told crude tales of drive-by shootings, drugs and police harassment in the tough Los Angeles suburb.

by CNB