Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr Dre has been delayed for so long that even hardcore fans might have had doubts. But it’s a stunning comeback that cements the rapper’s place in history

When your stake in a company making not particularly great headphones has pushed you close to being a billionaire, does it matter to you if your new album is relevant or not? More to the point, when you’ve had your hand in some of the biggest selling hip-hop records of all time – guiding the career of Eminem and Snoop Dogg, helping to invent gangsta rap, writing the blueprint for G-Funk – do you even need to be judged cutting edge in 2015? Haven’t you been there, done that? If you’re Dr Dre, such a concern could be trifling. But from listening to Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr Dre, his first album since 1999’s 2001 (and only his third album since 1992’s debut the Chronic) it actually seems to matter to him as much as ever.

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Dre has been going long enough to call Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa contemporaries, yet in 2015, he’s still able to drop onto a Kendrick Lamar track and sound like he’s only just arrived. His gift for rejuvenation is remarkable and, far from phoning it in, he has already scrapped this comeback album (when it was known as Detox or, to give it its official title “The long-awaited Detox”) simply because he wasn’t happy with it, sales be damned. There’s still something of the perfectionist about him.

Yet there was also a nagging sense, even among longtime fans, that Dre’s best days could be behind him. When did he last craft a masterpiece? Is he too busy mugging in Eminem videos to drop something as epochal as 1992’s The Chronic? Are the Kendrick collaborations just a chance for the new star to doff his cap at a legend before he’s put out to pasture?



Lots of questions, and only Compton can begin to answer them. He sets his stall out early, roping in fresh new guests but waving his walking stick too: “I’m too old I forgot I got it all, but Andre young enough to still get involved” he rhymes on opener Talk About It. And he is. He wisely avoids retreading old stylistic ground and nor does he try to skew too young for the clubs. Instead, he captures much of the manic, musical joy of Kendrick’s recent instant classic To Pimp a Butterfly, an album made for the headphone experience. Hip-hop fights for elbow room with blues, scat, doo-wop and funk by the fistful. It’s the restless, soulful brew of a man who hasn’t put out his own long-player this millennium.

The introspection of Darkside/Gone, with its shout out to colleague turned adversary Eazy-E, makes way for the chaos of Loose Cannons and the even more hyper Issues. The latter features a reunion with Ice Cube, but what’s most thrilling is the surplus of ideas, with something always happening at the margins, pulling the groove into different areas. This is not someone coasting on reputation; this is someone cementing their place in history.

Snoop Dogg feeds off the energy, turning in his best guest shot in years on the viciously propulsive One Shot One Kill, and Gang Starr legend DJ Premier is similarly inspired, his work on Animals helping to make it an instant standout. If there’s a false note, it’s Eminem’s verse on Medicine Man. It’s structurally brilliant, but he falls into his familiar habits of shouting a lot and trying to say the most offensive thing in the room. He succeeds, and temporarily takes you out of the story the album has thrillingly told.

What’s particularly impressive is how Dre, inspired by the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, has captured the past of his hometown – The Game, Snoop, Cube, Cold 187um (of oft-overlooked legends Above the Law, whose debut album was produced by one Dr. Dre back in 1989) – and mixed it perfectly with the present. Asia Bryant, Jon Connor, Justus, King Mez and Anderson Paak, among others, are all newcomers who more than justify their presence here. Dre and NWA aren’t simply the past, a moment preserved in amber – with Compton he’s shown us something new under the Californian sun.