MC Eiht

Veteran West Coast gangsta rapper MC Eiht devoted much of his existence to music, launching his groundbreaking path alongside Compton's Most Wanted (CMW) while still in his teens. Even at that age, he propelled the crew toward national visibility right at the start of the '90s. CMW took cues from Ice-T and fellow Compton natives N.W.A yet stayed comparatively understated, avoiding the sales volume and public friction that defined earlier successes, so the act stayed mostly underground even after occasional Billboard entries. CMW issued three albums prior to Eiht's 1993 launch as a solo artist, retaining the crew's producer DJ Slip and unveiling "Streiht Up Menace" as his first standalone single. His initial solo full-length, We Come Strapped, then led Billboard's R&B album chart the following year and earned gold certification. Eiht's output both inside and outside CMW kept expanding, and by the 2010s his stature stood firm, evident in collaborations with veterans such as DJ Quik and DJ Premier alongside younger figures like Kendrick Lamar, who viewed him as a foundational authority.

Born Aaron Tyler in Los Angeles, Eiht entered the scene with CMW in the late '80s. Once the single "This Is Compton" appeared on Techno Hop—the same label that hosted key early tracks from Ice-T and King Tee—the group moved to Orpheus and delivered It's a Compton Thang (1990), Straight Checkn 'Em (1991), and Music to Driveby (1992). Each project reached the Billboard 200 and yielded singles including "One Time Gaffled 'Em Up," "Growin' Up in the Hood," and "Hood Took Me Under." Eiht's Slip-produced debut solo single, "Streiht Up Menace" (1993), originated from the Menace II Society soundtrack, the hit film that also featured his acting. After that single's impact, he joined the Sony-distributed Epic Street label and teamed again with Slip for his first solo album, We Come Strapped. Credited as "MC Eiht Featuring CMW," the set actually contained no other CMW members beyond the rapper and the producer. Still, it opened at number one on Billboard's R&B album chart without a major radio single and climbed into the Billboard 200's upper five.

Subsequent albums never matched We Come Strapped commercially, although releases such as the further Epic projects Death Threatz (1996) and Last Man Standing (1997) plus the independent Veterans Day (2004) have been judged stronger by some listeners. Eiht maintained a steady pace of solo recordings while periodically reuniting with CMW. In the 2010s he appeared on the title track of Kendrick Lamar's Grammy-nominated Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, and in 2017 he issued Which Way Iz West, his first proper album in more than ten years, with beats supplied by DJ Premier and guest spots from CMW, WC, and Kurupt.