still reeling from the riots that erupted after Rodney King’s brutal beating at the hands of the LAPD, Dre released his debut album, The Chronic. Dre and Suge quickly formed Death Row Records, and, as 1992 was bleeding into ’93, with black L.A. introduced him to Suge Knight, a 300-pound bodyguard turned businessman with a knack for getting people out of contracts. To make things worse, he was still signed to Heller and Eazy’s Ruthless Records. In 1991, at the peak of N.W.A’s popularity, Dre quit the group due to the poisonous financial disputes between its members and the group’s manager, Jerry Heller, who was backed by member Eazy-E, and found himself with nowhere to go. He’s an escape artist and a damn good self-preserver. I don’t know if it’s guile, luck, or a combination of both, but when you’ve managed to survive as long as Dre has, it doesn’t really matter. How the hell did he do it?ĭre’s that action hero who walks out of an explosion unscathed he’s Houdini underwater, wriggling out of a straitjacket right when you think it’s too late. Over the course of one album, Dre shaped his-and hip-hop’s-future. He made people remember only what he wanted them to: a version of history that ignored his violent assaults of several women. Dre, the man who had already shape-shifted into and out of the pioneering sounds and high-stakes dramas of N.W.A and Death Row, reinvented himself yet again, this time at 34 years old, and changed music in the process. The fact remains that what he accomplished with 2001 was almost alchemy: Somehow, Dr. But 2001 nonetheless still has a hold on me, and I sometimes find myself believing the myths about Dre, and this album, that I obsessed over as a teenager. At the time, I didn’t realize that it sounded too perfect to be true, that maybe 2001 was not just a mythical gangsta rap album, but also a Dre rehabilitation project. The draws of 2001’s story are numerous: There was the cathartic reconciliation with Snoop, the discovery of Eminem, the introduction of an unprecedented space-age sound, the blend of West Coast legacies old and new, the massive commercial success that followed. Growing up in L.A., where he remains omnipresent, I was captivated by Dre’s mystery-and the lore surrounding this comeback album in particular. 2001, a big-budget, tightly controlled film, had to create a myth bigger than the man itself. It had to reassert Dre’s place atop of rap’s hierarchy while also cementing, and smoothing over, his legacy. 2001, released 20 years ago on November 16, had to be more than an album. the Aftermath, which announced his intention to step away from gangsta rap-and the rocky start of his new label that he felt compelled to bend the truth. It wasn’t, actually, but the stakes were so high for Dre to rebound from his real second album-1996’s soulless Dr. “Haters say Dre fell off / How? Nigga, my last album was The Chronic,” he scoffs on the same song.
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It’s not a lie, but it’s certainly not the truth Dre’s version of the period of time between leaving Death Row Records in 19’s triumph in 1999 excludes a series of excruciating personal and professional setbacks that tell a more complex story of who Andre Young really is. “Since the last time you heard from me I lost some friends / Well, hell, me and Snoop, we dippin’ again / Kept my ear to the streets, signed Eminem,” he raps. It’s cinematic and immersive, which is exactly what Dre intended: Coming off of three years in the wilderness, Dre needed more than a new sound. Twenty years later, even though the myth of 2001 has worn off, the song is still transportive. Dre’s 2001, is an antihero’s theme, the music Denzel Washington’s bad cop Alonzo Harris flips on before his panoramic tour of L.A.’s underbelly in Training Day. “Still D.R.E.,” the first single from Dr. You know the ones: that murderous mob-movie piano, clinking as it’s methodically built out by a lone cello and mournful violins, then by electric bass and drums so crisp they sound pulled from the soul of the Korg Triton machine they were produced on. I still can’t shake the goosebumps I get when I hear those keys.
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