Ruthless Records was founded by rapper Priority Records.
The majority of all Ruthless material was distributed by the Epic.
In 1993, Ruthless dropped all ties with Priority, Atlantic and Epic and moved to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
Years after Eazy-E's death from AIDS, the Ruthless label and back catalog (excluding the Michel'le and Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony material, which stayed with Atlantic and Sony Music respectively) was sold to longtime distributor Priority Records, which in turn was bought out by Capitol and became one of its subsidiaries.
Since 2011, Ruthless Records was inactive for a short time, but was then relaunched in late 2015 by Eazy-E's widow, Tomica Wright.
