![]() ![]() These are two-pronged gambits - on the one hand, Dre is a magnanimous discoverer of talent. Most prevalent is Kendrick, who shows up for three inspired moments of desperate eloquence, all of a piece with his recent To Pimp a Butterfly. Then there is the litany of longtime cohorts - a becalmed Cube, an invigorated Snoop, an at-home Xzibit, a so-at-home-he-might-sign-a-lease The Game - all aware of the moment, using their voices with a battering-ram force that has been absent in recent years. There are several R&B singers here, too, more than he has ever employed, from the veteran Dre collaborator Marsha Ambrosius to the South African singer Candice Pillay and sandy-voiced BJ the Chicago Kid. Paak and King Mez, tenacious young Los Angeles–based MCs recruited as much for their writing as their fealty to Dre’s historicity. There is a surprisingly visible underclass, like the relatively unknown Anderson. 1Ĭompton is no exception - it is flooded with names both bold and anonymous. But Dre’s creative process is strictly egalitarian - to the winners go the songwriting credits. The list of absorbed and abandoned Dre coconspirators is long enough to fill a marble notebook. And not just superstars-in-waiting like Cube or Snoop, but figures like the Lady of Rage, Daz Dillinger, and Kurupt, who contributed lyrics and guest appearances during the making of his 1992 album, The Chronic or the producer Mel-Man and multi-instrumentalist Mike Elizondo, who crafted elements of the aerated astral funk on Dre’s 2001. He’s a flexible general manager, moving talent in and out without sentimentality, deftly executing his vision for a successful franchise. Dre has always had a knack for surrounding himself with the right collaborators, and for putting them in a position to succeed. (Is there any doubt Iovine - who is sampled delivering an aphoristic motivational speech on the new album - has now benefited from a Dre partnership at least as much as Eminem, the biggest rap star ever?) This talent management is highlighted in a crucial early scene in Straight Outta Compton, when a young Dre coaches a nascent Eazy-E on how to land on the beat during the recording of “Boyz-n-the Hood.” He shames Eazy into greatness, gently mocking a performance out of him. His horde of mentees - among them Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and in many ways his moneyman Jimmy Iovine - has used his recording insight and overwhelming mastery of production to launch superstar careers. While he’s rarely mistaken for a conscious leader, no one rallies a squad like Dre. Instead, it’s the first eyes-wide-open moment in a solo career that has been undeniably earth-shifting but also socially abstract. At first blush, it is neither masterpiece nor mistake. Instead, his surprise new project, Compton: The Soundtrack, a sort of spiritual companion inspired by the movie that appeared on Apple Music last night, makes him the first rap artist to release highly anticipated albums in four consecutive decades. That album, of course, has been canceled, a fever dream we’ve recovered from all too quickly. A social cipher, a rapper unconsidered, and an apolitical evader, he has existed as the living embodiment of anticipation for an entire generation of rap fans who have awaited and doubted his long-promised third album, Detox. But Dre is everything - to N.W.A, to this movie, to 30 years of rap music itself - and also nothing. And they often do.Įazy-E and Ice Cube are the other primary figures in Straight Outta Compton - the prophet and the poet, the not-so-canny CEO and the creative soldier. Contractual malfeasance, emotional discontent, unrepentant violence - Dre feels none of it, content to compose thunderous song after thunderous song, as his friends try to conjure the intensity to match his music. Gary Gray’s film is a dreamer, a student of sound ignorant to the tumultuous details around him. The teenage Andre Young we come to know in the first half of F. Dre in the new movie Straight Outta Compton, he’s sprawled in a pile of vinyl, his eyes closed as Roy Ayers’s “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” blares in his headphones, vibraphone mallets splashing against his eardrums. ![]()
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