After a shaky start, the label signed Detroit rapper Eminem. Parting ways with the notorious Knight, Dre formed Aftermath Entertainment, a boutique rap label, in 1996. ” He also was Death Row’s in-house producer, responsible for Dogg’s massively successful Doggystyle as well as acting as the supervising producer for the Above the Rim soundtrack. His debut album, The Chronic, made with the help of Snoop Dogg and The Lady of Rage (among others) went triple platinum. in 1991 and formed Death Row Records with Suge Knight the following year. It set up California as home to the most innovative hip-hop of the next decade.ĭre left N.W.A. The music was apolitical, explicit, angry, hedonistic, and unrepentant. Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy E did most of the rapping. Songs like “ Fuck Tha Police ” from 1988s Straight Outta Compton talked openly about police brutality. One year later, in 1987, Dre helped design gangsta rap with N.W.A. What compelled Dre to keep working on it year after year? How, for a record that was probably never even completed, much less issued, did it become so monolithic in the minds of his fans?īorn Andre Romelle Young in Compton, California in 1965, Dre had his first local hit with the World Class Wreckin’ Cru at age 19. The most interesting thing about Detox is not what it would have sounded like had it been released, but its relationship to its creator. Responsible for game-changing albums The Chronic (1992) and 2001 (1999), Dre has nothing to prove by producing the rumored Detox. He co-founded Death Row Records after that - almost single-handedly inventing the West Coast G-funk style in the process - produced Snoop Doggy Dogg, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and Eminem, to name a few, and founded Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics. He was a member of seminal rap group N.W.A. Responsible for dozens, if not hundreds, of millions of records sold, Dre is a rapper, producer, actor, and music industry entrepreneur - a musical architect who defined a generation of expression.

We do have a few singles from the project to listen to, including “I Need A Doctor,” featuring Eminem and Skylar Grey, released in 2011.ĭre has apologized for physically abusing female partners - something that goes beyond the misogyny common in early ’90s hip hop - but only in a career as accomplished as his could such an epic dashing of hope become a footnote. After first announcing the record in 2002, Dre finally admitted in 2015 that Detox was shelved because he “didn’t like it.” It’s probably just as well, because no album made by actual, fallible people - no matter how talented - could live up to such breathless, protracted hype.ĭetox didn’t begin as a n empty promise. The legendary hip-hop producer’s supposed third album persisted in the public’s mind for 13 years, kept alive by rumors, leaks, and revised release dates. Dre’s Detox might be the best-known album that no one’s ever heard in its entirety. Tom Maxwell | Longreads | March, 2021 | 6 minutes (1,743 words)ĭr.

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