Andre Romelle Young known professionally as Dr. Dre is considered the most commercially successful hip hop personality of all time influencing both hip hop and mainstream culture throughout his over 30 year career. Considered the first rap personality to make a billion dollars, his influence comes from work as a rapper, a producer, a record label and entertainment executive, an entrepreneur, and an actor.
Born 18 February 1965, Dre grew up in Compton, and was primarily raised by his grandmother as his family moved quite a bit, while he was attending suburban Roosevelt high school away from the gang violence of Compton. Dre’s parents were separated early on in his life and his mother, Verna Young was once remarried to Warren Griffin, father of Warren G. Making Warren G Dre’s step brother. Dr. Dre didn’t excel in high school and mostly had poor grades requiring him to move from school to school. At one point he tried to apprentice for an aviation company, but was rejected due to poor grades. This failure in schooling created space for the young Dre’s other interests, most specifically music.
In 1985, Dr. Dre began his music career as a member of the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, and later found fame with the gangsta rap group N.W.A. In 1984, Dr. Dre got very interested in DJing after spending a lot of time at “Eve after dark”, a club in Compton. Fascinated by Grandmaster flash’s club banger, “The adventures of grandmaster flash on the wheels of steel”, young Dre would go to the club to watch rappers and DJs doing their thing live. This exposure would lead him to make his first music moves, and he quickly became a resident DJ at Eve, going by the name Dr. J in honour of his favorite basketball player, Julius Erving, a hall of fame legend, who popularized the basketball in America during his time as forward for the New York Nets and Philadelphia 76ers. The legend won 3 championships during his career and 4 most valuable player awards. He went by the nickname Dr. J. This kind of success and excellence was a strong influence on young Dre, who quickly adopted the nickname of his idol as he began his early music explorations at Eve.
Eve would prove a great training ground for the young upstart, giving birth to Dr. Dre. Young Dre quickly developed confidence in his craft, and dubbed himself “Master of Mixology”. This new found confidence led him to create a name that was all his — Dr. Dre, leaving behind the J from his hero in favor of his own name, but retaining the title Dr. to assert his prowess in music. At Eve after Dark, Dr. Dre met aspiring rapper Antoine Carraby, who would later become fellow NWA group mate DJ Yella. The two began collaborating, recording the song “Surgery” in the back room studio of Eve.
Following the track’s success on the west coast hip hop scene, the duo were invited by founder of Eve, Alonzo Williams to join his electro hop music group, “World Class Wreckin’ Cru”. Williams later created a label, The Cru, to release the group’s music, and “Surgery” was the second single released by the label, followed by a full length album, “World Class”. The album’s success led to a deal with CBS records, who requested more acts from the Cru, so the young Dr. Dre brought in his cousin’s group CIA, whose member Ice Cube would later become a member of NWA. The CBS deal gave “World class” bigger distribution and ultimately built a base of fans for the group and its individual members on the underground west coast music scene. By 1987, this new found success led Dre to drop out of high school; but at his mother’s insistence that he get a job and continue his education, Dre briefly attended radio broadcasting school. Ultimately he would forgo school completely to focus full time on his DJ gig at Eve After Dark.
Around the same time, Dr. Dre also began working on side projects, producing in the Cru’s studio at Eve. Most notably Dre produced for local entrepreneur Eazy E’s “Ruthless Records”. As Dre became successful, he also started to get into trouble, racking up traffic violations and refusing to settle them. Alonzo Williams would typically post Dre’s bail, but after a third violation he refused. In exchange for production work on Ruthless Records, Eazy E paid Dr. Dre’s traffic violation bail. Throughout his career Dre would frequently get in trouble with the law. In August 1994, shortly after winning his Grammy for best rap solo, “Let me ride”, he was sentenced to 8 months in jail for drunk driving. Prior to that, he was convicted for battery after breaking a man’s jaw outside his girlfriend’s home in 1993.
Dre began working more with Eazy-E through his Ruthless Records and he would begin collaborating with O’Shea Jackson, known popularly as Ice Cube. These relationships led to the formation of NWA, which stands for Niggas With Attitude, by Eazy-E. Together with fellow producer Arabian Prince, and long time collaborator DJ Yella, NWA was off to a promising start. In 1987 Ruthless Records dropped the compilation album NWA and the Posse with the hit single “Panic Zone”, a track originally written by Mexican Rapper Krazy-Dee as “Hispanic Zone”, but changed to Panic because Dr. Dre understood that the word “Hispanic” wouldn’t help sales.
For most of the 1980s, New York city, where hip hop originated was the dominant rap scene. Los Angeles was on the come up around the time with “dance party”, “electro rap” and “funk hop” as dominant styles popularized by DJs. In the early days of hip hop, the DJ was king, setting the beat over which rappers would spit their verses. By 1984, the MC became the focal point when Run-DMC dropped their break out album “Run-DMC”; the album presented a tougher more hardcore side to hip hop. Ice T would take this hardcore side to the next level, giving birth to gangsta rap, with hardcore rap lyrics that depicted the raw energy and violence in the streets of New York. Ice T’s debut album, Rhyme Pays, released in 1987 was the second hip hop album to receive an explicit sticker. Around the same time Eric Wright, a drug dealer, known popularly as Eazy-E setup Ruthless records. He recruited Dr. Dre and Ice Cube to craft the song, “Boyz-n-the-hood” following Ice-T’s model. Initially intended for one of Ruthless record’s acts, Eazy-E decided to rap the song and make it his own, when the group rejected it because of its slow tempo that was considered difficult to dance to.
Going beyond Ice-T’s playbook, NWA infused gangsta rap with their own signature with more vivid descriptions of violent street life, aggressive resistance to authority and sexist violence. The hit single of their Straight Outta Compton album, “Fuck tha Police” got flagged by the FBI for lyrics like:
We can go toe to toe in the middle of a cell
Fuckin’ with me ’cause I’m a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin’ my car, lookin’ for the product
Thinkin’ every nigga is sellin’ narcotics
You’d rather see, me in the pen
Than me and Lorenzo rollin’ in a Benz-o
Beat a police out of shape
And when I’m finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
NWA’s first record proved widely popular and successful, despite little radio play and no major concert tours. Fans connected with the realness of NWA’s brand of gangsta rap, which favored lyrics that depicted violent inner-city streets. Straight Outta Compton changed the game.
Dissatisfied with the money he received from Ruthless Records, Ice Cube was convinced that his record deal was unfair and he and his group mates were being cheated of their dues but Eazy-E and co-owner of Ruthless Records, Jerry Heller. Following the Straight Outta Compton success, in 1989, Ice Cube stepped down from the group to pursue a solo career.