Music mogul Dr. Dre has been making hit records since his time in the N.W.A. But one of his most highly anticipated albums, Detox, never saw the light of day. And Dre’s inability to complete the record once made him second-guess himself as an artist.
Dr. Dre spent years working on ‘Detox’
Detox was supposed to be Dre’s third solo studio album after his highly successful sophomore feature 2001. The album was going to feature several well-known hip-hop artists at the time. Some of his own signed artists like 50 Cent and Eminem would also contribute to Detox.
Dre aimed to make Detox stand out from his previous albums by telling a coherent story on the record. Rumors floated around at the time that Detox would be inspired by the film Training Day, which he had a small role in.
“I had to come up with something different but still keep it hardcore, so what I decided to do was make my album one story about one person and just do the record through a character’s eyes,” he once told MTV News (via Rolling Stone).
According to the publication, there were other rumors that Denzel Washington would be narrating the entire album. But this was back in the early 2000s.
Over the course of many years, there were various reports that Dre was gearing up to release his long-awaited Detox. Rappers and producers like Snoop Dogg and Scott Storch confirmed the existence of the record, providing updates. Dre himself would sometimes claim the album would be released at a certain date. But ultimately, the album would never come to be.
Dr. Dre questioned himself as an artist when he couldn’t complete ‘Detox’
Eventually, it would seem that the hip-hop producer would scrap his Detox record entirely. This was a blow to the producer’s pride, who put in a massive effort for what might’ve been his third album.
“I had between 20 and 40 songs for Detox, and I just couldn’t feel it,” Dre once told Rolling Stone in 2015. “Usually I can hear the sequence of an album as I’m going, but I wasn’t able to do that. I wasn’t feeling it in my gut. So I really thought I was done being an artist.”
Dr. Dre was inspired by ‘Straight Outta Compton’ to create ‘Compton’
Although Dre scrapped his Detox album, he managed to return to the hip-hop world with the record Compton. It was an album he felt the urge to make after working on songs for the 2015 biopic film Straight Outta Compton. Dre would release Compton that same year.
“I felt a great album coming. I know that feeling after being in it for so long,” Dre said in a separate Rolling Stone interview. “So I just said, ‘I’m going for it’ and really started blacking out in the studio.”
Dre’s direction for Compton would go a new route than perhaps his Detox would. This was because this time Dre aimed to uplift his listeners more with the album.
“I want this album to be inspiring. I want it to be motivational. So that was the foundation throughout the entire record,” Dre explained. “The record is just me reflecting and I’m basically just talking to myself. It’s just me in the room and I’m talking to myself.”
