With Straight Outta Compton hitting theaters tomorrow, N.W.A. nostalgia and #StraightOutta memes have flooded the internet. There are plenty of great pieces revisiting the influential rap group’s history and impact – Billboard, for example, had Kendrick Lamar interview Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, MC Ren, and Ice Cube. But it was Phoenix New Times who grabbed our attention with a story on the N.W.A. member you don’t hear about as often: Krazy D, the Mexican member who helped write “Panic Zone,” the group’s first hit.
Krazy D, aka Damon Trujillo, calls himself an “original member” of the group, and in an interview with the Phoenix New Times, he talks about his time with N.W.A. and what came after. Krazy D is pictured on their debut 1987 “N.W.A. and the Posse” album. Though he sings in “Dopeman” and wrote half of “Eazy-Duz-It,” Krazy D has never received credit for it, he says. On the IMDb page for Straight Outta Compton, Krazy D doesn’t show up by any of the many names he goes by, and to be fair, we wouldn’t necessarily expect him to be a subject of the movie. Still, Krazy D was an important part of its beginnings, and is the only Latino ever photographed on an N.W.A. record. Just recently, he said he still had 10 of the group’s unreleased tracks.
Read the Phoenix New Times feature to see what else Krazy D, who now works as a real estate appraiser in Las Vegas, has been up to.