Dr. Dre is set to release his first album in 15 years through Apple’s new streaming music service, the rapper announced on Saturday.
Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr. Dre, which arrives over a decade after his 1999 album, 2001, will be out Friday on Apple Music, Dr. Dre revealed during his Beats 1 radio show, “The Pharmacy.” The album was inspired by the upcoming biopic Straight Outta Compton, which tells the story of his rise in the music world alongside Ice Cube and the late Eazy-E, members of the Los Angeles rap group N.W.A.
“I felt myself being so inspired by the movie that I started to record an album,” Dr Dre said during his radio show. “It’s going to be my grand finale. The record is bananas.”
The hip-hop industry had long expected Detox, the rapper and producer’s notoriously long-delayed third album, to be his “grand finale.” But Dre said on Saturday that the album he has worked on since the early 2000s will never see the light of day. “I didn’t like it. It wasn’t good,” he said. “I worked my a** off on it, and I don’t think I did a good enough job.”
The album’s release on Apple Music comes as no surprise, as Dr. Dre’s headphone company, Beats Electronics, was acquired by Apple in 2014. The company, co-founded by music industry exec Jimmy Iovine, became an integral part of Apple Music when it was released in late June.
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