partner Eazy-E is familiar to anyone who saw the 2015 movie ' Straight Outta Compton.') (The dispute between Dre and his former N.W.A. Ruthless spent the year trying to figure out ways not to pay me so that I'd come back on my hands and knees.' Maybe that's melodramatic exaggeration, but in a 1993 Rolling Stone profile, the mastermind behind N.W.A.'s panzer-attack sound recalled: 'I needed a record to come out. . . We instinctively remember the Dre of bulletproof myth, but there was a time when doors slammed in his face. None of this even accounts for his attack on rapper and “Pump it Up” host Dee Barnes - a brutal assault that indelibly stains his legacy.Īmong the most interesting music alternative history scenarios is this one: What if Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine had never entered the picture? In May 1992, Dre left a music industry convention in New Orleans in handcuffs after allegedly participating in a brawl that left a 15-year-old stabbed and four police officers wounded. In the year leading up to 'The Chronic,' disturbing headlines overshadowed his music: a punch by Dre shattered another producer's jaw MTV News reported on a shooting that left four bullets in his leg he totaled his car and his house burned down. sound architect was flat broke and fighting legal turmoil on multiple fronts. Apart from the west San Fernando Valley home that he'd purchased with ' Straight Outta Compton' money, the 27-year-old former N.W.A. (Patrick Downs/LA Times via Getty Images)īefore hip-hop's Hippocrates became a headphone billionaire, he was nearly destitute. Dre and Snoop Dogg in a recording studio in 1993. It introduced the addictive slang and drawl of Snoop Dogg, helped clear the path to marijuana legalization and offered an answer to the eternal question of 'did what's his name get at you?'ĭr. It codified G-Funk, the languid palm tree thump that became the defining sound of Los Angeles rap. It sold a million Chicago White Sox hats and size-44 khakis. It certainly didn't invent gangsta rap, but it was the first to alchemize it into the dominant soundtrack of American party music. Dre's debut solo album sold almost 6 million copies domestically and became immediately canonized in pop culture. Released a quarter-century ago this month, Dr. But inside Solar Studios, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg perfected perfection, rolling up “The Chronic” while America’s second-largest city crumbled into scorched earth. Rodney King vainly attempted to keep the peace. Reginald Denny battled the reaper in the ICU. The looting had begun, swiftly fanning out from the intersection of Florence and Normandie all the way to up Frederick’s of Hollywood. As sulfurous tendrils of smoke and ash swirled in the air above Cahuenga Boulevard, the studio started filling with a swap meet’s worth of televisions and stereos.

Doctor dre albums