Jerry Heller, the combative music manager whose fraught relationship with the seminal hip-hop group N.W.A was searingly portrayed in last year’s box office hit “Straight Outta Compton,” died Friday of a heart attack at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks. After his rock career fizzled, Heller became an important and colorful figure in the emerging West Coast rap scene of the 1980s. "N.W.A were the first great rap audio documentarians of the problems in our inner cities.”Though influential, the group was short-lived. In October, he filed a $110-million libel suit against Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, NBC Universal and others involved in its creation, saying it was “littered” with inaccuracies. That’s how I want to be judged — by what I’ve done, not by what people like Ice Cube and Dr. Dre have said about me.”He is survived by his brother Ken Heller and nephew Terry Heller.

Source: Los Angeles Times September 03, 2016 17:26 UTC