Roger Fingas
One of the most famous rap albums of all time — Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" — will reportedly make its premiere on streaming services with this week's launch of Apple Music.
The album will be available with tomorrow's launch of the service, a source told Rolling Stone. Currently The Chronic is not available to stream on any platform — Spotify, for instance, only offers the follow-up album 2001, in original and instrumental versions.
Dr. Dre, whose real name is Andre Young, was one of the co-founders of Beats, which Apple acquired in May 2014. Despite this Beats Music — the service on which Apple Music is based — has also lacked The Chronic, and the album is not available for sale through iTunes.
The widespread absence may be attributable in part to Dre's legal dispute with Death Row Records, which only allowed the rapper to reclaim digital rights to the album in 2011. Dre was awarded all proceeds of The Chronic's digital sales, while Death Row kept the rights for physical sales.
Apple may be hoping to use the album as another exclusive to lure people away from services like Spotify and Rdio. The company has already managed to secure Taylor Swift's 1989, as well as Pharrell Williams' new single "Freedom."
Dr. Dre has been working on a new album for many years, and given his employment at Apple, it could conceivably become another Apple Music exclusive. The album, once known as Detox, was originally expected back in 2003.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
46 Comments
I'll bet there will be a lot of highly offensive language in this...yet no one will bat an eyelash. /s (?)
I'm irked they've torpedoed all the iTunes Radio stations early. I liked my Electronic Chill and Classical Chill playlists. I had to stick to Claude Debussy Radio yesterday.
If the new ones showing now are the standard we can expect under Apple Music I am not impressed. Names like "The Mixtape", "Sound System" and "All-City" are all completely meaningless and the music seems to largely be crap.
From Wikipedia: The album's lyrics caused some controversy, as the subject matter included homophobia and violent representations. It was noted that the album was a "frightening amalgam of inner-city street gangs that includes misogynist sexual politics and violent revenge scenarios".[16] Dr. Dre's dissing of former band-mate, Eazy-E, resulted in vicious lyrics, which were mainly aimed at offending his enemy with homosexual implications, although it was noted to have "a spirited cleverness in the phrasing and rhymes; in other words, the song is offensive, but it's creatively offensive".[17]
Is Dre limiting this to Apple Music? If so, is that collusion since he’s an Apple employee? The DOJ will probably jump on this quickly.
And no I’m not being sarcastic. This could actually happen since it’s Apple you know and there’s a big bullseye painted on their back.
This is pretty amazing (in a bad way), given Apple's progressive stance, Tim's orientation, and the following album description from Wikipedia: "The album's lyrics caused some controversy, as the subject matter included homophobia and violent representations. It was noted that the album was a 'frightening amalgam of inner-city street gangs that includes misogynist sexual politics and violent revenge scenarios'. Dr. Dre's dissing of former band-mate, Eazy-E, resulted in vicious lyrics, which were mainly aimed at offending his enemy with homosexual implications, although it was noted to have 'a spirited cleverness in the phrasing and rhymes; in other words, the song is offensive, but it's creatively offensive'." Ben Folds does a tongue-in-cheek easy-listening cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit", but Dre's original version is just... offensive.