Jerry Heller

Gerald Elliot "Jerry" Heller (October 6, 1940 – September 2, 2016 was an American music manager. He was most famously known for managing controversial gangsta rap group N.W.A in the 1980s and 90s. He was the manager when N.W.A released their hugely famous studio album Straight Outta Compton.

Heller's lawyer blamed the portrayal of him in the film Straight Outta Compton for his death. He was driving when he suffered a heart attack, crashed his car, and died at a hospital in Thousand Oaks, California on September 2, 2016. His lawyer said that the film put him "under a tremendous amount of stress"

Early Life
Heller was born on October 6, 1940 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was born into a Jewish household, which Ice Cube would use as a diss in his famous 1991 N.W.A diss track "No Vaseline", in which he would rap: "You let a Jew break up my crew?". Heller briefly served in the United States Army before attending University of Southern California. He began working in the music industry in 1963. After working at Associated Booking, Coast Artists and the Chartwell, he opened the Heller-Fischel Agency in Beverly Hills, California which grossed over $10 million in its first four years of existence. The agency worked with rock stars such as The Who, Grand Funk and Humble Pie. Heller later bought out his partner Don Fischel.

In the mid-1980s, Heller saw opportunity in the hip-hop genre. He began working with Ruthless Records, Priority Records and Interscope Records. The labels included a young Eric Wright (Eazy-E) and Andre Young (Dr.Dre).

Managing the West Coast Rap
Later, Heller began managing rap artists in Los Angeles, the most famous being C.I.A, which Ice Cube was a member of, and The World Class Wreckin' Cru, which Dr. Dre and DJ Yella were a part of. In 1987, Heller was invited to manage N.W.A and managed N.W.A through its huge successes in the form of the aforementioned "Straight Outta Compton" album, containing widely known songs such as "Straight Outta Compton", "Fuck The Police" and "Express Yourself". N.W.A had to deal with threats from the Federal Bureau of Investigation for encouraging violence on police officers.

Heller also oversaw the release of "Eazy Duz It", "Supersonic", "No One Can Do It Better" and Miche'le's debut song.

After N.W.A
N.W.A broke up in 1991. Both Dr. Dre and Ice Cube blamed Heller for the break up. Ice Cube made those opinions public in his 1991 diss track "No Vaseline", in which he said "Gangbanged by your manager fella, gettin' money out yo ass, like a mothafuckin' Ready Teller." Heller married his girlfriend Gayle Steiner in 1996. but divorced in 2014.