World Class Wreckin' Cru - Success and Breakup

Success and Breakup

By 1985 Kru-Cut had produced World Class’ debut album, ‘World Class’, with Cli-N-Tel leaving to control his own direction in life, leaving the group’s dancer Shakespear to step up to be the prominent MC as they signed with Epic Records. With this they released a string of singles and also their second album, Rapped In Romance.

World Class’s success was building a strong army of fans in the underground scene and each member a valued reputation. At this stage the look of Prince and Michael Jackson’s Thriller outfits were cool, glitzy purple leather suits, sequin suits not unlike the glam-rock look running parallel to this scene, Dre was growing tired of the image and considered Lonzo’s direction to be soft and yearned to control his own expression in music. He was bound to Lonzo’s Kru-Cut Records contract and often found himself in debt to him for using his recording studio and bail money every time he was put behind bars in jail for unpaid fines on his car. In order to pay this off, Dre worked endlessly for Lonzo DJing and producing tracks for World Class’s and Kru Cut’s recordings.

At this time Dre was working on side projects for local entrepreneur Eric ‘Eazy-E’ Wright with his homies from CIA in the Kru-Cut studio and Ice Cube was enlisted to ghostwrite for the World Class single ‘House Calls/Cabbage Patch’ single in 1987 and shortly after, featuring Michel’le, (Dre’s girlfriend) came out the slow jam hit ‘Before You Turn off the Lights’ that was a huge hit across the country on the pop charts in early 1988. Dre was arrested and thrown back in jail after his Mazda RX7 car was impounded for compounding car fines of over $900, Lonzo wasn’t prepared to bail him out, Eazy-E paid this out in return for Dre’s production trade for E’s new record company ‘Ruthless Records’. This disrupted the continuation of the World Class Wreckin’ Cru clique with Dre spending more time working under Eazy, Lonzo hung onto the master tapes of World Class releasing Turn Off The Lights In The Fast Lane album which entered the R&B Top 40 in 1988 concurrent with Eazy and Dre’s combined World Class and CIA collaboration of talent known as N.W.A. Lonzo released a further LP called ‘Phases in Life’ released in 1990 under Lonzo’s solo identity. Later, remaining World Class members, Shakespeare pursued a position as a pastor. Michel'le married Dr. Dre and released an album on Ruthless Records. Lonzo attempted to play off the big success of the group's last single by reassembling a new World Class Wreckin Cru.