It doesn't actually matter when Dr. Dre finally decides to release "Detox" — his follow−up album to "2001" (1999) — because no one is going to buy it.
You forgot about Dre, didn't you?
The good doctor is an interesting character. He was the producer and DJ for seminal West Coast gangster rap group N.W.A., then he was the biggest producer in the game, then he was a rapper. Now he's middle aged, and it doesn't really matter anymore.
His only feature song on N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" (1988) is "Express Yourself," a four and a half minute protest song against censorship that includes the bafflingly out of character line, "I don't smoke weed or cess/ 'Cause it's known to give a brother brain damage." And then four years later he released an album called "The Chronic" (1992), an ode to marijuana. Go figure. Dre never really solidified a coherent persona, so for a while he's been going with "reclusive perfectionist."
On his smash hit "Forgot About Dre" (2000), Dr. Dre raps furiously that in the seven years between "The Chronic" and "2001" he had begun to fade into obsolescence. Big things happened between 1992 and 1999 in the rap world, and Dre was busy with much of it, producing all of Snoop Dogg's breakout album and a number of tracks for Tupac Shakur and Nas, two of the biggest names in '90s hip hop.
How is Dre going to follow up "Forgot About Dre" when we've forgotten "Forgot About Dre?" Eminem took a major step into the limelight with "Forgot About Dre," but now even he seems unnecessary as the awkward older−generation rapper who sticks out on the latest remix of Drake's "Forever" (2010).
For the record: Drake was six years old when "The Chronic" came out; he was thirteen when "Forgot About Dre" hit.
A lot of people are comparing "Detox" to the Guns N' Roses (GnR) album, "Chinese Democracy." GnR promised "Chinese Democracy" in 1994 and fans waited fifteen years until 2007 for it to finally drop. I bought "Chinese Democracy" at Best Buy for $14.99 on Black Friday 2007; I'll never forget that. I wasn't a huge GnR fan, but it was important. And today, two years later, I still haven't listened to it.
The major difference between the GnR album and "Detox" is that I won't buy "Detox."
Don't get me wrong; I love Dr. Dre. "The Chronic" is one of my favorite albums, and I respect what he's done for hip hop throughout his (almost unheard of) 23−year career, but at this point we don't really need "Detox" — Dre has earned his place on Mount Rapmore. He could retire if he wanted to.
For the past 11 years the only thing that Dr. Dre has really worked on are projects from his line of protégés, namely Eminem, Fifty Cent and The Game. That's glossing over a lot of work, but it's a lot of forgettable work, like the two weakest tracks on Raekwon's 2009 opus "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II."
The rumors swirling around this album are ridiculous, from Dre recording over 400 songs that he's currently attempting to whittle into an album to Dre taking piano lessons from none other than Burt Bacharach for some orchestral pieces.
Don't think about that last bit too hard, though, because none of us will hear any of it any time soon. Just this past January, the ever elusive Dr. Dre announced in an interview that he's holding the album back for at least another year. Maybe Dre will release "Detox" in time for my graduation? Yeah, not bloody likely.
It isn't that I'm ready to hate "Detox." I just won't listen to it because there's no way that it will ever live up to my former hopes for it.
Detox: 0 out of 5 stars.
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Mitchell Geller is a junior majoring in psychology and English. He can be reached at Mitchell.Geller@tufts.edu.
