The D.O.C. Is The Secret Weapon Behind N.W.A.

If they wrote a book on the life of D.O.C., you think anyone would read it? They should, f*@kers. Y’all have to wait, though. The secret weapon behind the N.W.A. franchise has a new LP and a few more chapters to live.

Words Gabriel Alvarez
Images Mike Schreiber

The weekend could not have been better for 21-year-old Tracy Curry. Even though he was working on a video shoot in Los Angeles, he was all jokes and laughs. Better known to the world as the highenergy rapper the D.O.C., he held a framed gold record for No One Can Do It Better, his debut album on Ruthless Records. The LP had been released six months earlier and had already sold over 500,000 copies. He took a healthy gulp from his beer and smiled.

This was not the first gold record he had received. Back in his Agora Hills, CA home, the talented Texas transplant had award plaques for Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It and N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton, two other very successful LPs featuring his essential behind-the-scenes contributions.But this felt even better. After years of ghostwriting lyrics for Eazy and producer extraordinaire Dr. Dre, the D.O.C. had finally stepped into the spotlight. He had delivered big-time, and truth be told, he felt like he was only warming up.

The a.m. rap radio station KDAY had continuously spun the D.O.C.’s incredible single “It’s Funky Enough” all summer long. They, like the rest of the nation, had also taken a liking to a smoother-thansmooth track called “The Formula.” That was the song Curry was shooting a video for. It takes place in a smoky laboratory where the diabolical Dr. Dre pieces together the world’s greatest MC. That creation, strapped to an operating table, was none other than the D.O.C.

On the set, surrounded by N.W.A homies, foxy female extras and an exotic mist made by many lit spliffs, Doc, as everybody calls him, waited for his call to jump back in front of the cameras. It was November 1989, two weeks before Thanksgiving, and this up-and-coming rap superstar had plenty to be grateful for. The D.O.C.’s madman howl cut through the thick air of noisy conversations and clanking bottles. No, it didn’t get any better than this.

Tracy Curry grew up in the West Dallas Projects in the late ’60s. By age 20 he’d become an architect of the genre labeled gangsta rap, but his humble beginnings couldn’t have been more different. “Comin’ up as a young guy I was not a hard-rock, thug nigga or street nigga,” says Doc quite openly. It’s a dozen years later, November 2001 to be exact, inside a spacious, wellkept Dallas loft. “I was an introvert really. I spent a lot of time in the crib reading books. Staying out of trouble.”

Because his parents worked long and hard at their blue-collar jobs, Tracy, the youngest of four, spent a lot of time at the homes of relatives and family friends, and regularly attended church, where he excelled in the choir. “When I was young, I had a beautiful singing voice,” he says.

But he was also heavily into rap, inspired by Rakim’s brilliant lyricism. By high school he and a friend had started the Fila Fresh Crew. Their DJ, Doctor Rock, had lived in LA, where he’d been in a group with popular beat-man Dr. Dre. Eventually, Doctor Rock invited his old cohort to Dallas. Andre Young was then making noise with N.W.A on the independent Ruthless Records, owned by street-hustler-turned-music-impresario Eazy-E. In 1987, Dre asked the Texas trio to return to Cali to work with him.

For the D.O.C., this was his big chance. When he moved to the City of Angels, his first shock came when he discovered his neighbors were gang-banging Bloods. “Straight outta Texas, man, I was seein’ and hearin’ things that was blowin’ my mind,” he says. “I had seen the movie Colors, but [now] they was doin’ it for real—right outside!”

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