LOS ANGELES : Administrator Appointed to Sort Out Rapper’s Estate
A probate judge Monday ordered a special administrator to sort out the tangled estate of rapper Eazy-E and return May 22 with a business plan for the late singer’s record company.
Judge Robert Letteau appointed a representative of Chemical Trust Bank of California to investigate the value of Eric Wright’s record label, Ruthless Records. The company has been closed because of an ownership squabble between Wright’s widow, Tomica Wood, and his former business manager, Mike Klein. The singer died of AIDS in March.
Wright, known as the “godfather of gangsta rap,” pioneered the genre with the controversial Compton-based rap group NWA in the late 1980s.
Letteau said the administrator, Ernie Singleton, will preside over the reopening of the Woodland Hills office of Ruthless sometime this week. Attorney Ron Sweeney and Wright’s widow had been handling the estate, which is valued at around $15 million. The business plan will set the stage for the division of Wright’s dwindling fortune.
The dispute has been complicated by lawsuits filed against the estate by two women who claim to have borne Wright’s children.
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