Rapper the DOC (real name: Tracy Lynn Curry) is featured in the Straight Outta Compton film. You might remember him as the tippling, up-and-coming NWA associate who crashes his car and ruins his career. But his small role in the movie underplays his contribution to the group. He was their unofficial sixth member – seventh if you count Arabian Prince, which you should – helping write many of their most famous tracks and appearing in their skits, including as the redneck cop on Fuck tha Police.

His 1989 solo album No One Can Do It Better came on the heels of NWA’s breakout, and it became a classic, going platinum and earning shout-outs from Jay Z, among many others. But only three months after its release, driving home intoxicated from a video shoot, the Dallas rapper crashed his car. When the arriving paramedics tried to insert a breathing tube, he fought them, which caused his larynx to be scarred. In a flash, his melodic, sing-song flow and famous verbal dexterity was gone. Though he would go on to ghostwrite big hits from Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg, like Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang and The Next Episode, and he would release more albums (of diminished quality), his solo career was basically over.

That is, until this past weekend. At a club in his hometown on Saturday night, he performed what was billed as his first show in decades. Playing old hits and some new songs before an ecstatic crowd, he was flanked by singer Erykah Badu (the mother of his daughter Puma) and Scarface, the Geto Boys rapper who went on to become one of the south’s most-lauded rappers – perhaps in DOC’s place. By all accounts, it was a high-energy, inspiring performance.

The DOC (far right, back row) with the rest of NWA. Photograph: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

This concert was a long time in the making. I personally had been anticipating a DOC comeback for years, ever since interviewing him at a San Fernando Valley restaurant in 2011. He was in the LA area to work with Dre on the now-shelved Detox, and his voice sounded gravely; it reminded me of a smoker’s voice box. He spoke at length about his plans to receive an experimental surgery involving stem cells on his windpipe from a European doctor, and hoped to be rapping like his old self before long.

In the end it didn’t pan out; DOC decided the surgery was too risky. “I might not have been able to speak at all,” he told me in June. But since then, something has happened: his voice has started improving on its own. “The DOC Got His Voice Back”, read one headline. This is overstatement, however; audio of an interview this summer shows he still speaks in a gravely manner, but, as he notes at the 9:30 mark, if he concentrates, he can speak naturally again. It clearly requires effort for him to do this, but it’s nonetheless hopeful and exciting news for him and his fans.

This improvement is undoubtedly what gave him confidence for the show on Saturday night. Held at Dallas venue The Bomb Factory, it featured numerous other Dallas rap luminaries on the bill. I was bummed to miss out, but from what I’ve heard the crowd was simultaneously jazzed and apprehensive: would the DOC be able to pull this off? Almost immediately he answered affirmatively, performing a series of No One Could Do It Better tracks – including favorites like It’s Funky Enough and The DOC and the Doctor – before playing some new songs.

By all accounts his voice was not back to its original brilliance, and he relied to a great extent on the backing track to round out his vocals. But, hell, even Eminem does that, and in the case of DOC’s show it clearly did not diminish the experience. The concert “made you proud to be from Dallas”, wrote Jeremy Hallock in the Dallas Observer.

One of DOC’s new songs, Everything, was dedicated to Badu, who he told the audience was “the love of my life”. Apparently this was awkward, and Badu basically played it off, though not as explicitly as she did after he told me the two of them were going to get married in a reality show he was planning. Whatever – the pair clearly have a bond, sealed by their daughter and their love of the groove. She closed out the show with an extended DJ set, which included his music.

The takeaway here is not that DOC has his voice back, though there’s reason to be optimistic he might get it back at some point. The takeaway is that DOC is, for the first time in what seems like forever, a functioning solo artist. No longer just a ghostwriter, he’s writing and performing his own songs. For someone who had his fame stripped at the height of his success – and then went on to nearly drink himself into oblivion – this is shaping up as the hip-hop feel good story of the year.