Dr. Dre is putting some of his millions to good use, announcing the donation of all royalties from his new album
Compton to fund a new performing arts center in the city of the same name, which Dre made famous in his earlier gangster-rap hit albums.
"I feel it's the right thing to do and I hope everybody appreciates the work I put into this album," Dre told Beats 1 radio DJ Zane Lowe on Thursday's show. Dre said he's been working with the city's mayor, Aja Brown: "We've reached out to Aja Brown quite a few times in the last month or two," Dre said. "I've been really trying to do something special for Compton and just couldn't quite figure out what it was. She actually had this idea and she was already in the process of working on it. I said, 'Boom, this is what we should do."
The album debuted yesterday, in a three-hour loop on Apple Music; the album is officially for sale today. The record boasts 16 new songs with guest appearances by the likes of Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, the Game, Xhibit and more. The tracks are released to much hype about the ground-breaking rapper's last oeuvre -- but also with disappointment, as fans had anticipated the much-mythologized
Detox, which was to be Dre's final work. He now says he's abandoned that project and that
Compton will be his "grand finale."
Why'd he abandon
Detox? It just wasn't good, he says: "This is something you're not gonna hear many artists say. The reason Detox didn't come out was because I didn't like it. It wasn't good. I'm gonna keep it all-the-way 1,000 with you, seriously. I worked my ass off on it, I don't think I did a good enough job, and I couldn't do that to my fans and I couldn't do that to myself, to be perfectly honest with you. I just wasn't feeling it."
The album serves as the soundtrack for the N.W.A. biopic,
Straight Outta Compton which hits theaters next Friday. "During principal photography, I felt myself going to the studio and being so inspired by the movie that I started recording an album," Dre said on Beats 1 show
The Pharmacy earlier this month. "I kept it under wraps, and now the album is finished. It's bananas.... I'm really proud of this."
Speaking of being proud, it seems Dre wanted to get back to his roots and do some good in the community where he grew up, especially after being criticized for his and Beats partner Jimmy Iovine's $70-million donation to establish the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy For the Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation at the University of Southern California in 2013 just before they sold Beats to Apple for a $3 billion the following year.
