A biography for DJ Yellahasn’t been written yet.
“Growing up, you always heard of cops beating people up behind buildings and letting them go. Now they just shoot them.”
“You know, I wasn't a rapper, never wanted to be a rapper. That wasn't my style.”
“When I graduated from high school, I became a DJ in a club, a local hang-out called Eve After Dark.”
“I don't see the violence stopping, from the L.A. riots 25 years ago to the Baltimore riots from 2015 to today - at least, not until a cop goes to jail. Until someone gets 30 to 50 years - something substantial - I really don't think it'll stop.”
“I had no idea NWA would blow up as big as we did.”
“Me and Dre go back so far - a long 30 years - even before N.W.A. The way we talk to each other now is the same way we talked when we first met. No big heads, no ego stuff.”
“We broke up in '91, but we didn't fade out, we didn't burn ourselves out, we were on pause for 26 years. We stopped at the height, we were No. 1 and we just broke up.”
“We didn't know anything about publishing. The first go-around we didn't make a nickel.”
“I still DJ the same way, but I'm not a scratch-scratch-scratch battle DJ. No, I'll rock the house. I'm old school.”
“The early '90s was the best time for hip-hop. The Cube's, the Snoop's, the Dre's - that was a golden time with great music, great albums, great groups, everything.”
“When we were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I asked the guy who runs it, 'How many people in here have had only two albums?' He could not think of one person.”
“If we did another tour, we probably would have stuck together. But a lot of little things happened with people coming in and talking behind the scenes.”
“Cops are doing crazy things now, and they catching theyselves; bodycams, carcams. But until they really start giving these cops time - 50 years, 100 years - it's not gonna stop. As long as they keep getting off, nothing's gonna happen. It's been going on since before N.W.A.”
“When we were doing music, that's how we did-we just did it for the music. We weren't thinking about money, we weren't thinking about fame. Music was our passion.”
“Most of our songs were just talking about what we had seen in the ghetto. We weren't thinking, 'Oh, this is going to be large and we'll have gold records.' We were thinking it would be local and we'd make a couple of bucks.”
“I've always loved the recording studio.”
“When we broke up, the group was Number One on the Billboard chart. I mean, groups don't break up at Number One. They break up at Number 1,000.”
“We never even thought about a Hall of Fame. We never even thought about a gold record, tell you the truth.”
“The first time I saw the Rodney King video, I remember thinking, 'Wow, these cops just got 100 years in jail.' Obviously that didn't happen.”
“Me and Dre did all, from Wreckin' Cru to Ruthless, all that. We started making songs first... back then it was the slow songs, techno, whatever they called it back then. 'Planet Rock,' that kinda stuff.”