And though hip-hop prides itself on authenticity, that goes out the window the instant your first album becomes a hit. But who cares? Frank Sinatra didn’t write his own music either. You can practically hear the criticisms that Dre isn’t from the streets anymore and that he doesn’t write his own material (guessing who ghost-wrote each of his verses is a fun parlor game - finding the Eminem verse isn’t very difficult). It’s a sonic wonderland best experienced at very high volumes when driving around with nothing to do.
It’s over-produced at every level, which isn’t an insult and wasn’t when similar things were said about Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. There’s something going on in every song. Musically, Compton is the opposite of the sparse production that has become en vogue in recent years. “Trying to get finances poppin/Man I thought that was the object?” he raps on early standout Darkside/Gone. There’s still some resentfulness in his voice though, much more so than on 2001 when he was only a little bitter in rapping “they say Dre fell off/how my last album was The Chronic?” On Compton Dre isn’t apologizing for his success, but can’t believe why so many hate on him for having it. “I want it all/ I forgot I’m old enough, I have it all,” he raps on the album starter Talk About It. Instead of rapping about guns and weed, Dre speaks about those in the past tense. That Hennessy smooth voice you remember from that album, particularly in Nuthin But A ‘G’ Thang is gone, which is fine - anyone who wanted The Chronic II is about 20 years too late. But, as is his style, he’s judicious, frequently letting others have the spotlight, just like he did in his first album track ever, when he essentially let Snoop have Dre Day. With a little more bulldog in his voice than usual, maybe from working so much with Kendrick Lamar, Dre shines on the tracks he allows himself to dominate. Dre of 19, but it hardly matters on Compton, the companion soundtrack to the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, which hits theaters next week. Dre’s third and final album, Compton, somehow manages to live up to 16 years of mythic expectations, taking the raw west-coast sound that made him a star with N.W.A and turned him into one of the biggest rappers alive, mixing it with the modern hip-hop sensibility that should have passed him by years ago and dropping another classic CD for y’all to vibe with, 23 years after his first.
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