Dr Dre: The Music for All That Ails Hip Hop

Dr. Dre is one of the biggest names, if not the biggest name, in all of hip hop, and we're talking about the whole span of hip hop, going back to the 1970s and through the entire 2000s so far. Can you name anybody bigger than Dr. Dre? Sure, there's Tupac, Puffy, Kanye, and LL Cool J, but most of them haven't been around as long as Dre (with the exception of L) and most all of them haven't been as successful both as a writer and artist as well as a producer.

After all, Dr Dre has really been around since 1984, when he joined the group the World Class Wreckin Cru. Even back then, with songs like "Surgery," Dre was big, at least big around the local Compton, California-based hip hop scene. Back then if you listened to Dre, you heard some funky electronic beats that were big around then. You could even listen to Dr. Dre mixing beats on a local radio station during rush hour with his buddy DJ Yella.

Around 1986, though, Dr Dre would get mixed up with the right crew of gangsters. We're talking the original West Coast gansta rappers, NWA. It started when DJ Yella and Dre got in touch with Ice Cube, and all three got in touch with Eazy-E. You might have heard of him? Eazy was the owner and operator back then of a little label called Ruthless Records. Together, they formed the group NWA, whose first album "Straight Outta Comptom" would shake the hip hop world to its core-and still is.

A New Sound Is Born

Before NWA (and Ice T, truth be told), rappers really didn't curse or talk about shooting, robbing, and running guns. Now, all you hear is rappers talking about this stuff. But back then, you had to listen to Dr. Dre and NWA to get this sound, and it was so original, so compelling, that the first NWA album went huge despite the fact that no radio station dared play it. Rumor has it, the members of NWA even got letters from the FBI to tell them to cease and desist with the bad music.

NWA would have another album come out, called Efil4zaggin, but by then Ice Cube had already left the group, and soon so would Dre. But not before Dr. Dre found one of his other true callings: producing other people's music. It would be the likes of the DOC and Above the Law who Dre made big stars with the developing West Coast sound that Dre was cooking up.

But what happened to break up NWA? They were huge in 1991, but Eazy-E and Dr. Dre got into a contract dispute, just like Ice Cube had. So Dre left, and with Suge Knight, started Death Row Records. It would be with Death Row that Dre became epic.

Defining Death Row

By 1992, the first Dr. Dre song with Death Row came out, on the soundtrack for the movie "Deep Cover." There, Dre started his collaboration with a really unheard of rapper at that time, a tall skinny guy by the name of Snoop Dogg. Heard of him, right? The two would combine again with the full Dr. Dre album called the "Chronic."

It would be on this album that Dre would perfect that Dr. Dre sound, now called West Coast G-Funk. What it was really was a lot of funky beats, mixed in with high-pitched, synthesizer squeals, and slow-down and dirty lyrics. What am I talking about? You can hear it perfectly on such Dr. Dre tunes as "Nuthin But a G Thang" and "Let me Ride." Next, Dre and Snoop would collaborate on Snoop's first album

But as before, Dre had to leave the label in 1995 because of an out of control label owner, this time Suge. Dre started his own label, Aftermath Entertainment. It was with his new label that the 1996 Dr. Dre record "Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath" came out. It was also with Aftermath, though, that Dre got really huge as a producer in 1998 with the signing of Eminem. You heard of him, right?

Dr. Dre albums would come out again in 1999 with " 2001" and continue to produce hit stars like Raekwon and 50 Cent. Heard of him too, right? His last Dr. Dre album is set to come out this year, called "Detox."

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