Upcoming Film:

SYNOPSIS

Once Upon a Time in Compton:
The Lonzo Williams Story and
The Rise of Gangsta Rap

The Alonzo “Lonzo” Williams story, and the rise of the west coast sound – often simplified as gangsta rap -- in the hip hop world begins, appropriately, in Compton, California where he came of age. Where even in high school he was booking $50 a night DJ gigs, running around town in his popped and dropped Chevy Vega. And in 1976, fresh out of high school, he got a scholarship to go the Los Angeles School of Broadcasting.

Not much of a school, but Lonzo spent those months learning how to be a radio jock and got his 3rd class broadcast license. This was a particularly exquisite pursuit for the young Lonzo given he had a lisp that made it hard for him to pronounce words that started with ‘th’ which for him came out ‘da.’ His friends and some family members said he was wasting my time. His mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and his pops wanted him to get a job with the transportation department like he had -- you know, good, steady work, but it only made Lonzo more determined to make things happen on his terms.

“So I could tell them all to kiss my Daffy Duck talking ass,” Lonzo said.

Once Upon a Time in Compton is not merely the story of a focused young man overcoming the odds to succeed in the predator-laden music business. It is that; but Lonzo’s story is also the story of the personalities, the players and the haters, and the beat that emerged from the threadbare streets of Compton and the greater Los Angeles environs that has now exploded across the globe.

"Hip hop is an urban musical tree that has spawned branches from grafiti to
gangsta rap and is still growing,” Lonzo has opined
This book, done with the full cooperation and participation of Lonzo Williams, will tell the story of how he ran a nightclub called Eve After Dark, that became the nexus of this burgeoning hip hop scene where seminal rap figures Dr. Dre (Andre Young), Eazy E (Eric Wright), Ice Cube (Oshay Jackson), would congregate. And where the unschooled Dre got his first break with Lonzo at that club. Where Lonzo as impresario and promoter created a team of DJs called Disco Construction. And then as disco faded, put together the World Class Wreckin' Cru that would have hits like Cabbage Patch and Turn Off the Lights

He will relate how Eazy E used profits from his drug sales to do his first rap tapes in the studio Lonzo built. And how he and others not recognized in hip hop’s history were there when Dre, Eazy and Cube began N.W.A., Niggaz Wit Attitude. The group that was a prairie fire introducing a hardcore, blistering sound and lyrics that once ignited, continues to burn across the landscape of hip hop.

For Lonzo moved from street promoter, being the first one to bring Run DMC to Los Angeles, selling those early cuts at swap meets into the distribution game and leaned first hand that while the mob might be of East Coast, origins, they had a presence in Los Angeles as well.

Once Upon a Time in Compton will chronicle the good times as the money and fame enveloped Lonzo and those around him, and the bad times as inflated egos and rivalries that carried over from the streets be it personal or between the Bloods and Crips gangs played out sometimes in vicious and deadly ways.

But through it all Lonzo Williams learned and observed, strived and survived. The dope that brought some low and the bling that blinded others. The homeboys who are not here to day and those who live large, Lonzo knows these stories because he’s lived them. In the spirit of, but distinct from Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop, Don’t Stop, Tricia Rose’s Black Noise and Brain Cross’ Race, Rap and Resistance in L.A., Once Upon a Time in Compton will let Lonzo tell the tales, set the record straight, and quite simply, rock the house in this unflinching portrait of his life and times, and continuing presence and influence in the hip hop game.