If you've seen the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, you'll know the group's manager Jerry Heller is not portrayed in a very positive light. While Ice Cube and co. eat the grease at hamburger chain Fatburger, Heller dines on lobster for brunch. One scene pictures him witholding a $75,000 check from Ice Cube. Plenty of others suggest he didn't have the best interests of the entire group at heart, and there's an emotional conclusion that shows Eazy-E breaking ties with him after realizing how shady his paperwork is. Heller has some redeeming moments, such as a scene in which he defends NWA to a group of cops, but ultimately he is portrayed as the evil force that drove NWA apart and a crook.Continued below…Heller and NWA's relationship has long been fraught. In Ice Cube's infamous 1991 diss track "No Vaseline," which is also depicted in Straight Outta Compton, the rapper suggests that the remaining members of NWA are not just enslaved to their white manager but that they're being "gangbanged" by him and that he's taking "money out [their] ass". The song ends with the line "bend over for the goddamn cracker, no vaseline." It's a great (albeit homophobic) diss track which, understandably, upset Heller—in the film Straight Outta Compton, he declares it anti-semitic. Twenty-four years later, though, he's stated that the recent film upset him even more than that song. He's suing the film's producers, including Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E's widow Tomica Woods-Wright, for a combined $110 million in compensatory and punitive damages for defamation, copyright infringement, breach of contract and other charges.In an interview with Rolling Stone, Heller discusses the lawsuit and states, "I thought 'No Vaseline' was hurtful. But actually, this was more hurtful." Heller claims that "most of [Straight Outta Compton] was inaccurate, or just out-and-out not true". The claims that Ice Cube and Dr Dre weren't paid fairly? "They obviously didn't understand what was going on. I took 20 percent, 'cause I managed the group. If Dre got $75,000, I got $15,000. So $15,000 times five—'cause there were five members of the group—equals $75,000, which is 20 percent of the money that came in." And what about those lobster brunches? "I have never had a lobster brunch in my life." The only thing the film got right about him? "The scene where I was screaming at the cops."The piece makes for an interesting read. Heller's already presented his side of the story in his 2006 memoir Ruthless, which he calls "100 percent honest". He now claims, however, that scenes from that book were lifted "without his permission," which is part of the grounds for his lawsuit. Read the full interview here.Follow Ryan Bassil on Twitter.
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