Dr Dre [Bio]

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André Romell Young (born February 18, 1965 in Los Angeles, California), better known by stage nameDr. Dre, is an influential Grammy Award winning American record producer, hip hop producer, rapper, actor and record executive.

He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment, and a former co-owner and artist of Death Row Records. Dr. Dre was a founding member of the influential rap group N.W.A., which popularized the use of explicit lyrics in rap detailing the violence of street life (also known as Gangsta rap). He has also produced albums for and overseen the careers of some of the biggest stars in rap music, including Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, The Game, Nate Dogg, Rakim, Busta Rhymes, and Eve. With tens of millions of records he has produced sold worldwide (including over 70 million with Eminem alone), he is widely regarded as one of the most popular figures in rap music history. As a producer he is credited as a key figure in the creation and popularization of West Coast G-funk, a style of rap music characterized as synthesizer-based with slow, heavy beats. G-funk dominated the U.S. rap charts in the period of 1992–1996, and is still considered one of the major living styles of hip hop today. In 2004, Dr. Dre was ranked in Rolling Stone Magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

N.W.A. and Ruthless Records


In 1986 after Young had begun to experiment in actual music production, he and fellow World Class Wreckin' Cru member DJ Yella left the group to join premiere gangsta rap group N.W.A., along with founding member and Ruthless Records head Eric "Eazy-E" Wright and rappers Ice Cube and MC Ren. Until that point, hip-hop had been considered a relatively benign form of music and free of profanity. N.W.A. however, along with fellow
west coast rapper Ice T, debuted with rhymes including profanity and gritty depictions of crime and life on the street. Propelled by the hit "Fuck tha Police", the group's first full album Straight Outta Compton became a major success, selling over 2,000,000 copies despite an almost complete absence of radio-airplay. As a producer, Young's vocals were limited on the album, but he achieved notoriety in 1990 after assaulting television host Dee Barnes after she aired a segment reporting on the feud between the remaining N.W.A. members and recently departed member Ice Cube. Possibly to compensate for Ice Cube's absence, he began to rap more on the group's second album Efil4zaggin. He also produced tracks for a number of other rap acts on Ruthless Records, including Above the Law, and his friend The D.O.C.'s album No One Can Do It Better. Young frequently used studio musicians for tracks, and his work with N.W.A. was co-produced by DJ Yella. Later, The D.O.C. would say that his album was the one record that Dr. Dre produced from start to finish without help from any outside contributors.

Death Row Records

Despite pioneering N.W.A.'s sound as the group's principal producer, Dr. Dre complained of unfair contracts that left him with little compensation for the group's tremendous profits (lead rapper and principal lyricist Ice Cube had left following the release of Straight Outta Compton due to similar complaints). After a dispute with Wright, Young left the
group at the peak of its popularity in 1991 under the advice of friend, and N.W.A. lyricist, The D.O.C.and his bodyguard at the time, Suge Knight. Knight, a notorious strongman and intimidator, was somehow able to have Wright release Young from his contract, and using Dr. Dre as his flagship artist, founded Death Row Records after securing a distribution deal with the fledgling Interscope Records, helmed by future head of Universal Music Jimmy Iovine. While N.W.A. had sold two million records of their breakthrough album Straight Outta Compton, they had been a counter-culture phenomenon, and done so on an independent label (Ruthless Records) without radio airplay or major acceptance from the mainstream record industry. Interscope head Iovine saw promise in Young's music, and saw his new sweet, synthesizer-based sound as a way of palletizing the hard
beats of gangsta rap and giving it a more mainstream appeal. Iovine said: "One reason I hadn't been that interested in hip-hop is most hip-hop records sounded cheap, tinny". He later said in a 2006 interview with the Los Angeles Times:"...Dre's music sounded better on my speakers than most rock records. I didn't know hip-hop, but I knew my speakers, and this was fantastic".

In Spring of 1992, Young released his first solo single "Deep Cover", which was the beginning of his collaboration with Snoop Dogg, a promising young rapper introduced to him by his step-brother,Warren G (see references for details).

In 1992, Young released his debut album The Chronic[/url] under Death Row Records. Until this point, rap had been primarily party music (e.g., Def Jam Recording's The Beastie Boys[/url]), or angry and politically charged (e.g. Public Enemy, X-Clan,
etc.), and the music had consisted almost entirely of samples and breakbeats. Young ushered in a new style of rap, both in terms of musical style and lyrical content.
Artistically, The Chronic continued to describe gang life much in the same way that Young's former group N.W.A. had, but with more of a focus on women and soft drugs. The beats were slower and mellower, borrowing from late 1970s/early 1980s funk music by George Clinton and his group Parliament. By mixing these early influences with original live instrumentation, he created a distinctive musical style later to be known as G-funk
.
Although the album was initially unheralded, hits such as "Nuthin' But a "G" Thang", "Let Me Ride", and Fuck Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')", helped make The Chronic a cultural phenomenon, a multi-platinum seller, and is now widely considered to be one of rap's all-time classic albums. It soon became virtually impossible to hear mainstream hip-hop that wasn't affected in some way by Young. Hip-hop, which had once been a sample and break-beat centered music rising primarily form New York and
other East Coast cities, began to see a shift in attention to the West Coast, where the G-funk style created by Dr. Dre was the most influential. Indeed, were it not for the influence of Dr. Dre, it's possible that the infamous "East Coast/West Coast" feud of the
mid-1990s might never have even transpired, as the West would have had no competing style of rap or even many visible artists with which to contrast to New York's.

The following year, Young produced Snoop Dogg's debut album Doggystyle, with similar subject matter and musical style. The album achieved phenomenal success, being the first debut album for an artist to debutat on the Billboard charts. It went on to sell over 5,000,000 copies. Young was also instrumental in the creation of other hit west coast records, including the Death Row act Tha Dogg Pound's album Dogg Food, and influenced his own step-brother Warren G's album Regulate...G Funk Era.
In 1996, just as Death Row Records was signing rapper 2Pac and positioning him as their major star, Young left Death Row Records amidst a contract dispute and growing concerns that label boss Suge Knight was corrupt, financially dishonest and out of control. In an interview with The Source shortly after his departure, Dr. Dre alluded to incidents such as Suge Knight's beating of an engineer as pivotal in his decision to leave. He formed his own boutique label Aftermath Entertainment directly underneath Death Row's distributor, the Jimmy Iovine-helmed Interscope Records. Not long after Young's departure, the fortunes of Death Row took a dramatic turn, following the death of 2Pac and racketeering charges against Suge Knight. Within the next few months, the label's final major star Snoop Doggy
would also leave and Knight would go to prison. The label entered a steady decline, and now makes profits almost entirely off of old works recorded during its heyday.

1996–2001


The Dr. Dre Presents...The Aftermath album, released at the end of the year, featured songs by the newly signed Aftermath artists, and a solo track "Been There, Done That". The track was intended as a symbolic good-bye to gangsta rap, in which Young suggested that he was moving on to another level of music and lifestyle. While initially going gold, the album was considered a critical disappointment by Dre's standards,
failing to raise much talk of the label. Today, the compilation album is most notable for the fact that none of the artists introduced on the record went on to successful careers. In 1997, Young produced several tracks on Nas, Foxy Brown, AZ, and Nature Present The Firm: The Album. Although the album went platinum, it was met with similarly negative
reviews from critics. Rumors began to abound that Aftermath was facing financial difficulties. The turning point for Aftermath came in 1998 when Jimmy Iovine, the
boss of Aftermath's parent label Interscope, suggested that Young sign the white Detroit rapper Marshall Mathers, artistically known as Eminem, to Aftermath. Interscope saw promise in Mathers, but feared that the fact he was white would harm his credibility in the overwhelmingly black market of hip hop. It was hoped that pairing him with Young would
help establish him as a credible star (since then, Iovine has made similar matches with other Interscope artists, pairing Canadian singer Nelly Furtado with hip-hop producer Timbaland, and former ska-pop No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani with Pharrell Williams
(see references for details). In 1999, Young produced three songs and provided vocals for two on his controversial album, ("My Name Is", "Guilty Conscience" and "Role Model"). On these tracks, Eminem's over-the-top "Slim Shady" persona was contrasted with Dre's older, more sober, post-gangsta attitude to rap. On the song "Guilty Conscience", Dr. Dre and Eminem give conflicting advice to people faced with moral dilemmas, with Dr.Dre urging the song's characters to do the right thing, and Eminem urging them to give in to their darkest impulses. At the end of the track, Eminem begins to protest that Dr. Dre's "do right" advice is coming from the same man who had a physical altercation with TV host Dee Barnes in his younger years (the incident was later resolved out of court). At
first, Dr. Dre protests that those were older times, but eventually sighs "fuck it" and sides with Eminem's "evil" reaction. Eminem's debut album initially sold over 3 million copies, making it Aftermath's most successful release at the time. One thing it made
clear was that Dr. Dre's retirement from "gangsta rap" had been premature, and that rap music that commented on society's darker tendencies still resonated with the public. When Dr. Dre released his second solo album, 2001 in 1999, it was an ostentatious return to his gangsta rap and g-funk roots. The first single "Still D.R.E." re-united Dr. Dre with Death Row collaborator Snoop Dogg, and made renewed references to good marijuana and expensive cars, declaring "still got love for the streets". Once again, the album featured about as much of Dre's voice as the voices of numerous collaborators, including Devin the Dude, Hittman, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, Nate Dogg and Eminem. The album peaked at on the billboard charts and has since been certified six times platinum, thus reaffirming a recurring theme featured in its lyrics, stating that Dr. Dre was still a force to be
reckoned with, despite the lack of major releases in the previous few years.
In 2000, Eminem's even more successful and controversial sophomore release, The Marshall Mathers LP was released. The album featured angrier vocals from Eminem and took his "Slim Shady" persona to dizzying extremes (In a 2000 Spin magazine article, Eminem credited his improved vocals to Young's coaching). The album eventually went on to sell over 9 million copies in the U.S, and established Eminem as one of the biggest music stars in the world.
In 2000, Dr. Dre won a Grammy award for Producer Of The Year, for his work on "The Marshall Mathers LP" and "2001". The albums followed a new musical direction, characterised by high-pitched piano and string melodies over a deep and rich bassline.
The style was also prominent in his following production work for other artists, including hits such as "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" by Eve and Gwen Stefani (whom he would produce again on the Stefani and Eve track "Rich Girl"), "Break Ya Neck" by Busta Rhymes, and "Family Affair" by Mary J. Blige.

The Aftermath years (2002-present)


By the time Eminem's third album The Eminem Show was released in 2002, Eminem was producing the bulk of his output. However, Eminem's association with Dr. Dre remained a large part of Eminem's identity in rap. The Eminem Show sold over 20 million copies worldwide and was an unqualified success. In 2003, Dr. Dre and Eminem produced the major-label debut Get Rich or Die Tryin' for Queens rapper 50 Cent, featuring the Dr. Dre-produced hit single "In Da Club", as a joint production between Aftermath, and Eminem's boutique label Shady Records under Interscope. On the eve of its release, Dr. Dre declared it to be one of the best rap albums made in the past ten years, an opinion the record-buying public enthusiastically agreed with. The album sold over 11 million copies worldwide, establishing yet another major rap star under Aftermath and the Interscope umbrella. In early 2005, Aftermath released rapper The Game's debut album The Documentary in conjunction with 50 Cent's boutique label G-Unit Records.
Propelled by the lead single "How We Do" produced by Dr.Dre and Mike Elizondo and featuring 50 Cent, the album sold 586,000 copies in its first week and eventually sold over 2 million copies in the U.S., and over 5 million worldwide, establishing yet another superstar under the Aftermath label. Shortly after, Aftermath/Shady released 50 Cent's second album The Massacre, which fared even better, selling over 1 million records in a short week. It eventually sold over 6 million copies in the U.S alone, and became the second highest-selling album of 2005 (it was initially declared the highest selling, however, singer Mariah Carey's 2005 release The Emancipation of Mimi continued to chart throughout early 2006 and eventually outstripped it by a small margin). A falling-out between The Game and 50 Cent apparently created a rift at Aftermath. After being kicked out of 50 Cent's G-Unit group on-air during a February 2005 interview on Hot 97 (see references for details), The Game famously waged the G-Unot campaign against his Aftermath label-mate 50 Cent's group and subsidiary label G-Unit. To date, Dr. Dre has not spoken publicly about this matter, but The Game's second album, released November 14, 2006, and ironically titled Doctor's Advocate, was released on Geffen Records rather than on Dr. Dre's Aftermath label, and does not feature any production from him (in a recent XXL interview, The Game states that his public attacks and criticisms against Aftermath labelmate 50 Cent went against Dr. Dre's wishes, and is what led to the falling out). On the title track, The Game emotionally apologizes to Dr. Dre for disobeying his word. In a November 2006 interview with the Allhiphop.com, The Game states that he spoke with Dr. Dre via telephone, and that Dr. Dre congratulated him on his new album and wished him the best. He has also vowed that he will work with his mentor Dr. Dre again, although to date there are no quotes available from Dr. Dre himself that confirm
either of these claims (see references). Dr. Dre has also appeared in the movies The Wash and Training Day. He later stated that he does not intend to pursue a career in acting, however he did compose the music for Bad Boys 2. A song of his, "Bad
Intentions" (featuring Knoc-Turn'Al) and produced by Mahogany, was featured on The Wash soundtrack. Dre also appeared on two other songs "On the Blvd." and "The Wash" along with his co-star Snoop Dogg.

Present day and future projects


Dr. Dre is considered a perfectionist by many who have worked with him, and while some projects he has worked on have come together relatively quickly (ie. 50 Cent's debut album, which was recorded and released within a year of his signing to Shady/Aftermath), he is often notoriously slow releasing announced albums. Planned but unreleased
albums include a full length reunion with Snoop Dogg titled Breakup to Makeup, an album with fellow former N.W.A member Ice Cube titled Heltah Skeltah, an N.W.A reunion album, and a joint album with fellow producer Timbaland to be titled Chairmen of the Board. To date, none of these albums have come to fruition (see interviews with Snoop Dogg, the D.O.C., and Dr. Dre with Scratch Magazine listed below in references respectively). Perhaps the best-known of these delayed releases is that of his planned final solo album, Detox, which was first announced around 2000. In 2004, he cancelled the project, as he decided to put all his effort into producing the artists
on his Aftermath label, including Eminem, 50 Cent, Eve, Stat Quo, and Busta Rhymes, and
to spread the completed Detox tracks to their albums. However, in November 2004, Dr. Dre and Interscope confirmed that Detox was still in the works and is currently scheduled to be released in late 2007. Currently, Dr. Dre is working on Raekwon's album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II[. Other albums he is reported to be working on are Bishop Lamont's The Reformation, Chauncey Black's Church Boy, Papoose's The Nacirema Dream, Chamillionaire's Ultimate Victory, T.I.'s TI vs TIP, Slim Thug's Boss of All Bosses, and albums for Eve and G.A.G.E.. It is also said that he will contribute production to Lil Wayne's upcoming album Tha Carter III.

In February 2007, it was announced that Dr. Dre would produce "dark comedies" and horror films for New Line-owned company Crucial Films, along with longtime video director Phillip Atwell. Dr. Dre said: "This is a natural switch for me, since I've directed a lot of music videos, and I eventually want to get into directing".


Special Thank's to Wikipédia and Dr Dre Fans web site
All research and arrangement by P.J KING