The name Andre Young is one that used to ring out on street corners, but now it is spoken through (or at least behind the scenes)some of the greatest hip-hop tracks in musical history as the legendary Dr Dre. Nobody ever truly forgot about Dre, but music fans were delighted to know that the master of all trades, jack of none, is releasing a new album on the 7th of August, titled Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr Dre, after 16 years of no official solo material.
Dre initially rose to fame in the rap group N.W.A, who released the classic hip-hop album of the 80’s, Straight Outta Compton. Following the groups break up, Dre produced and featured on some of hip-hops most classic records, such as Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle and Tupac’s All Eyez On Me as well as releasing his own masterpiece, The Chronic.
Following that, Dre set up a record label and signed multi-platinum artists, released a successful follow up in 1999 entitled 2001, appeared in films and became the music industry’s biggest earner in 2015 with the sale of his headphone line to Apple.
Everyone expected a follow up to 2001, but Dre began focusing on production. Occasionally there were rumours of his next album being released since mid-2000s, with The Game calling Dre “the best rapper, who only releases an album every 7 years”. But 2006 came and went. The word Detox had been mentioned as the title of the album, but on a recent radio show, Dre announced that it was never released because it never met his high standards. There was even talks of a purely instrumental album called The Planets, with a song based around every planet in our solar system – like a modern Holst.
Dre states that Compton… draws its influence from the upcoming biopic of N.W.A, and the energy that Dre felt after seeing a cut of the movie that features his rise to fame. Dre spoke about the production of the album saying that “I kept it under wraps, and now the album is finished. It’s bananas…I’m really proud of it”, before going on to call the album his “grand finale”.
With the title and theme paying homage to Straight Outta Compton, the track listing appears to follow a proven successful formula, Compton… will feature other artists such as Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Xzibit, The Game, former NWA member Ice Cube and many more artists. It is often theorised about what would happen when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object, and we may never quite know, but in less than a week’s time we will learn what happens when an unstoppable force releases their final solo project and their first one in 16 years. Fingers are crossed all around the world hoping that it’ll still be classic, still D.R.E.
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