When Harry met Suge

A clandestine power meeting in prison organised by one of the biggest coke connects in the U.S. would later launch one of the most successful music recording label in American music.

Last November, convicted cocaine trafficker ‘Freeway’ Ricky Ross who proclaims to have netted $3 million on any given a day at the height of his reign was interviewed by hiphopdx.com where he detailed the story of how fallen music mogul Suge Knight befriended Michael ‘Harry-O‘ Harris – the would-be seed investor to Death Row Records.

The focus of the interview was Ross’ take on the recent release of FX’s new show Snowfall  – produced by John Singleton – detailing the crack epidemic of Los Angeles, California in the 1980s. Given the storyline of Snowfall, it would be reasonable to expect Ross to have had a creative consulting hand in the show’s production, but alas it did not happen.

On the peripherals to his response to the tv show, Freeway Ricky sketched a brief scene of the coming together of Death Row Records’ label boss Marion “Suge’ Knight and Ross’ cellmate at the time Harry-O while in lockdown in what would be the jump-off to one of the most successful and storied rap labels to this day.

I was there the first day that Harry O and Suge met,” Ross recalled. “Me and Harry O were cellies. I can even tell you how the whole thing [happened] and why. Harry was doing a record on his wife Lydia. [She] wanted to be a singer so he was producing her, and he had started me on reading magazines when I got in. So I’m reading one of the magazines and I saw that Dr. Dre and Eazy-E were on bad terms and so Harry is doing a record on his wife Lydia and I was like ‘Why don’t you have Dr. Dre produce one of her tracks?’ That would be the wise thing to do. Him and Eazy is having problems right now. He probably needs money. So Harry said ‘That’s a good idea.’ So immediately he started making phone calls. He wanted to get in touch with Ron Brown, who knew Suge and hooked up. Next thing I know they were forming a record label together.