Dr Dre’s ‘Compton’ Album Released Today

Today sees Dr Dre release his first solo (after a fashion) record since the 1999 record 2001. WIth an album release rate that would make the Stone Roses blush, Dre has been promising Detox, the follow up to 2001, for 16 years now. 2001 was itself only his second solo effort, following the classic debut album The Chronic, and the weight of expectation created by the two records has had Dre caught in the headlights for over a decade . At various times, Dre had described Detox as just about to drop, at one point describing it as a concept album that would basically 'be a hip hop musical' (to put that statement in context, it was made around the same time R Kelly was banging out the episodes of In The Closet). Now Detox has finally been abandoned, possibly forevermore. Instead Dre has side stepped the hype by knocking out Compton, an album made to coincide with with release of the much anticpated NWA bio-pic. 

Featuring cameos from Dre collaborators old and new, including Cube, Snoop, Em, Kendrick, Xzibit and The Game, alongside a whole host of less familiar names, the album has a tall lineage to stand up to. How will it compare to The Chronic and 2001? Is Dre going to score a trio of classics? Only one way to find out… 

In a surprising moment of altruism, Dre is donating the profits from Compton back to the area that made him, saying he has  "decided to donate all of my artist royalties from the sale of this album to help fund a new performing arts and entertainment facility for the kids in Compton". Awww. 

If you want to listen now, someone has already chucked the whole thing onto Youtube – there's not guarantee this link will be working in an hour, and you're gonna need to set the speed of playback  to 1.25 to hear it properly (hit the settings icon in the video). With that in mind, here you go: