![]() Diddy does it, too, but no one cares, because it’s Diddy.)Īs he did with Snoop Dogg on The Chronic and Eminem on 2001, Dre is giving a new artist their biggest platform to date, and this time it’s Anderson. Call it the "hip-hop would be much worse without you" clause or whatever you want, but these two rapper / producers have enough classics on both sides of their repertoires to do whatever they want with their lyrics, without repercussion. (As for rappers not writing their own lyrics, there are only two artists that get a full pass - Dr. Dre style, nearly every track on Compton is filled with features from the West Coast’s past, current, and upcoming stars - everyone from icons Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg, Dre-proteges Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, and relative newcomers like rapper / producer King Mez, who has writing credits on 12 of the 16 tracks on Compton. While it may have been inspired by Straight Outta Compton, it isn’t tied to that association, and that bodes well for its longevity. But it’s not burdened by Detox’s pressure to be an all-encompassing document of West Coast hip-hop, and it doesn’t drag you too deep into Dre’s recollection of Compton’s savagery in the mid-'80s. This sort of storytelling feels cinematic at times, and like a good movie, Compton begs to be experienced to from beginning to end. ![]() "It’s All on Me" featuring Justus and BJ The Chicago Kid finds Dre lamenting the struggles of being one of the few people to make it out of Compton, and how the iconic N.W.A track "Fuck tha Police" came about ("Face down on the pavement with the billy clubs / Took that feeling to the studio and cued it up / And now it's 'Fuck tha Police' all up in the club"). The album plays out as a journey through Dre’s nostalgic subconscious. It’s the type of treatment you’d find in a big-budget film, not on an album. ![]() It’s a dramatic piece of stage setting, and the final push into "Talk About It," the album’s first proper track, is epic in a way that very few albums have accomplished. ![]() The album opens with a news anchor giving an overview of Compton’s notable shift from a predominantly white suburb in the ‘30s to a black-dominated city by the ‘70s over a swelling beat that grows more menacing as the city’s current state is slowly revealed. Dre’s journey as he escaped the depths of one of the most notorious cities in America and built a billion-dollar empire while living in a house with the best view of Los Angeles money can buy. Dre AugCompton is a journey through Dre's Nostalgic SubconsciousĬompton recounts Dr. With the weight of Detox lifted, we have been given Compton, a raucous, audacious, impeccably produced finale that enlightens the uninitiated as to why Andre "Dr. Instead, Dre went on to announce Compton, an album created while he was executive producing on Straight Outta Compton, the biopic of the seminal ‘80s hip-hop group of which he was a member. Dre realized his predicament and cut his losses. Even if Dre did manage to do Detox justice, we - fans, hip-hop, planet Earth - no longer had any sense of perspective about it. "It wasn’t good… I worked my ass off on it, and I don’t think I did a good enough job," Dre said on his Beats 1 show The Pharmacy. The challenge to deliver an album that could match the hype grew on a daily basis. Blige, The Game, Nas, Jay Z, Lil Wayne, Marsha Ambrosius, Swizz Beatz, T.I., Drake, and Kendrick Lamar are just a few of the people who worked on Detox. During this time, the list of collaborators continued to grow the mythos of Detox Rakim, Eminem, 50 Cent, Mary J. Pepper commercial in 2009, which never manifested into a release the same thing happened in 20. Dre released a snippet of a song off Detox in a Dr. Then came the false starts a 2005 release was planned then scrapped Snoop Dogg said the album was finished in 2008, but nothing emerged Dr. The hype reached astronomical levels multiple times over the decade it was in production, with Dre calling it a “ hip-hop musical,” and one-time co-producer Scott Storch famously calling the album “ the most advanced rap album in history,” in 2004. Now make that artist one of the most seminal figures in hip-hop’s history, and that album a near-mythical body of work with astronomical expectations, and you have a recipe for disappointment.Īnnounced in 2002, Detox was supposed to be Dr. When you’ve waited 16 years for an album from an artist you like, the chances that it will meet your ever-growing expectations are scant at best.
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