More than any other rapper, Dr. Dre was responsible for moving away from the avant-noise and political stance of Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions as well as the party vibes of old-school rap. Instead, Dre pioneered gangsta rap and his own variation of the sound, G-funk. While BDP 's early albums were hardcore but cautionary tales of the criminal mind, Dre 's records with N.W.A. celebrated the hedonistic, amoral side of gang life. Dre was never much of a rapper -- his rhymes were simple and his delivery was slow and clumsy -- but as a producer, he was extraordinary. With N.W.A. he melded the noise collages of the Bomb Squad with funky rhythms. On his own, he reworked George Clinton 's elastic funk into the self-styled G-funk, a slow-rolling variation that relied more on sound than content. When he left N.W.A. in 1992, he founded Death Row Records with Suge Knight and the D.O.C ., and the label quickly became the dominant force in mid-'90s hip-hop thanks to his debut, The Chronic . Soon, most rap records imitated its sound, and his productions for Snoop Doggy Dogg and Blackstreet were massive hits. For nearly four years, G-funk dominated hip-hop, and Dre had enough sense to abandon it, and Death Row, just before the whole empire collapsed in late 1996. Dre retaliated by forming a new company, Aftermath, and while it was initially slow getting started, his bold moves forward earned critical respect. He later launched Beats by Dr. Dre, a company that introduced the celebrity headphones phenomenon, later morphed into a streaming music service, and was then bought by Apple Inc.

Most of the group's political threat left with Cube when he departed in late 1989 amid many financial disagreements. While Eazy appeared to be the undisputed leader following Cube 's departure -- and he was certainly responsible for the group approaching near-parodic levels with their final pair of records -- the music was in Dre 's hands. On both the 1990 EP 100 Miles and Runnin' and the 1991 album Efil4zaggin ("Niggaz4life" spelled backward), he created dense, funky sonic landscapes that were as responsible for keeping N.W.A. at the top of the charts as Eazy 's comic-book lyrics. While the group was at the peak of its popularity in 1991, Dre began to make efforts to leave the crew, especially after he was charged with assaulting Dee Barnes, the host of a televised rap show in 1991. The following year, Dre left the group to form Death Row Records with Suge Knight and N.W.A. affiliate the D.O.C . According to legend, Knight held N.W.A. 's manager at gunpoint and threatened to kill him if he refused to let Dre out of his contract.

The Death Row dynasty held strong until the spring of 1996, when Dre grew frustrated with Knight 's strong-arm techniques. At the time, Death Row was devoting itself to 2Pac 's label debut, All Eyez on Me (which featured Dre on the breakthrough hit "California Love"), and Snoop was busy recovering from his draining murder trial. Dre left the label in the summer of 1996 to form Aftermath, declaring gangsta rap dead. While he was subjected to endless taunts from his former Death Row colleagues, their sales had slipped by 1997, and Knight was imprisoned on racketeering charges by the end of the year. Dre 's first album for Aftermath, the various-artists collection Dr. Dre Presents...The Aftermath , received considerable media attention, but the record didn't become a hit despite the presence of his hit single "Been There Done That." Even though the album wasn't a success, the implosion of Death Row in 1997 proved that Dre 's inclinations were correct at the time. Dre 's de facto sophomore solo album 2001 -- which scored him a second Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Forgot About Dre" -- followed in 1999. That same year, Dre unveiled his next protégé, a young Detroit rapper named Eminem

With N.W.A.'s cultural resurgence and mainstream recognition of their legacy in the history of rap and hip-hop, the group received another honor for their contribution to music with their induction into the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.