One month later, I ask you to take another look at Dr. Dre’s “Compton”
by Jon Oh!
Every decade Dr. Dre decides to dust off his cobwebs and actually give the people a reason to call him one of the greatest producers ever. This decade he finally decided give us Detox…I mean Compton; the soundtrack to the box office hit which also has Dre’s hands all over it. It’s been about three to four weeks since they both debuted and now that all the initial excitement has gone my question is: was it really as good as the hype…or even better? Is any of his music or products for that matter?
Now before people get all in their feels and say I’m hating, let’s take a minute to break-down why I said what I said. First off, if you do a quick search of how popular the album still is, you’ll see that after the first week it’s been declining rapidly. The average Joe may say: “well, what do you expect, no album stays relevant forever”, which is true, but people still make tweets about “6ix God”, “TPAB” and if it’s anything to you, even Future’s “DS2”. And when people were tweeting/posting about the album heavily, it was about a supposed Drake diss by Kendrick, which I still have yet to hear. My point is I feel people just see Dre’s name as a stamp for quality and just agree with it; wether it’s actual quality or not. As for my opinion, I think this album was just average when it comes to Dre’s other work, and considering the fact that he’s such a ‘perfectionist’.
Before we go even deeper shall we discuss the fact that he really just decides the final cuts for the album and does some mixing & mastering from what I understand. From the looks of things, Dre really hasn’t done anything (alone) since the NWA days. It’s clear he doesn’t write, which is acceptable for a producer, but a producer who doesn’t really produce? Seems kind of nuts to me especially since he’s supposedly one of the best producers of all time, yet he doesn’t have enough clear credits to say he really is, imo. He gave you “The Chronic” (a great album for its time), and then you have “The Chronic 2001” which was really when people noticed he was rather ‘hands off’ in the producer department. After that you have a decade of nothing but Em, 50 (and some other artists) album credits which also are really other behind the scenes producers.
Now let’s discuss Detox slash Compton, and why I feel it’s so subpar. People have literally been waiting a decade or more for another great Dre album. I don’t know the schematics behind Detox or why they didn’t release it but there was documented footage of the making (in which Dre wasn’t in), a couple singles released, and it sounded promising. Eventually the album became a myth, fast forward several years and you have “Compton”. Though it has some solid production, and some dope artists there’s nothing special about it. If it had come out several years ago when it was supposed to (ok, last one) then it would’ve held great standards. Now, not so much. Especially when there’s so much good music out there. So again, I ask what is so great about Dr. Dre, because I’m obviously missing something here?
