“I was there. But I was just leaving, so I didn’t know what happened until I was halfway home,” Dre said of Knight’s fatal set visit. “I heard about it over the phone. Everybody was supportive everywhere we went, and we didn’t have one issue throughout the entire filming of the movie. It’s crazy that this happened during the fucking filming of the commercial.”
According to Rolling Stone‘s account of Knight’s downfall, the former Death Row mogul arrived on set after hearing that Straight Outta Compton had cast a “Suge look-alike” to appear in the film, and that the movie’s plot spilled into the early Death Row era. Knight, feeling someone owed him money for using his likeness without permission, headed out to the production to discuss the matter, which later turned into a shouting match and, eventually, the hit-and-run incident outside a Compton burger joint. (As The Hollywood Reporter noted, the film did add a last-minute scene where someone depicting a cigar-smoking Knight threatens another man with a pit bull.)
Dre and Ice Cube also discussed how attitudes toward hip-hop have changed in the quarter-century since N.W.A formed. While “Fuck tha Police” was a lightning rod for controversy upon its release, the pair still considered the single as vital as ever. “It was always about free speech, being able to express yourself, whether people like it or not,” Ice Cube said. “That’s the great thing about being in this country, is to be able to speak your mind and not be censored.”