AS TOLD TO DAILY-MATH.COM:Forgot About Dre?

I'm a pretty optimistic dude, in most situations.


I keep the faith, with my fingers crossed, the whole nine yards. But, there are two things I've given up on for the new year. The first is any naked pictures of Mariah Carey surfacing on the 'Net. No disrespect, Nick. All these D-list celebrities have candid shots, showing their nipple rings, clitoral piercings and what not, so am I a fool for thinking she should have some out there as well? Mariah's far from D-list, been in the business long enough, and has had more than enough emotional outbursts to have had a moment of weakness or three. Who wouldn't want to see that? But I digress. The second thing is Dr. Dre's 'Detox' album. I have 4 reasons why, in case you want to know...


1) Dre's a perfectionist...
We all know there's no such thing as perfection, but it's overly apparent that Dre doesn't agree. By that ethos, he'll never be able to live up to his own expectations. If you've ever watched a child race his own shadow, or a rotweiler chase his own tail, then you have an idea of what I'm saying. People who accept nothing less than exceptional are never satisfied. Especially when it comes to themselves. For years now, Andre Young's been promising this elite, exquisite album. Anxiously, we cling to his catalog of yesteryear hits, hoping to foresee what we are patiently waiting for. No Dice. The problem with being so critical is that, no one else is holed up like some reclusive madman, perfecting a sound that will only be re-invented as soon as it gets leaked to the 'Nets, which is bound to happen. So, for every song that he remixes and remasters to fabled perfection, 15 duck sauce rappers and their chow mein producers are flooding cyberspace with warm feces. More music to distract us, and further help us forget that 'Detox' is even in the works. According to the Hip Hop grade curve, Lil Boosie has a better chance at hypnotizing me than Dre does of mesmerizing me at this point. Of course, it's quality over quantity, but damn, if said quantity is 2-3 songs bi-yearly, if even that, then anything more than 2 songs in a year's span wins by default. Unless of course, he lives up to the hype, and delivers the most magnificent audio experience ever. Keep in mind, when Quincy Jones recorded 'Thriller' with Michael Jackson, he didn't believe in it. He chased perfection until he gave in and settled. Years later, it's the biggest selling album ever. So Dre, there's hope. Don't be so hard on yourself. At least give us a chance to criticize.


2)Dre's kinda a douche...
There's a reason why every time Dr. Dre's in the limelight again, he's usually surrounded by a different group of people than the last time we saw him. It's the same reason that 50 Cent always has the exact same two dudes with him all the time (they forget the other people). If you're familiar with Dre's industry presence, you could run down a laundry list of Dre-affiliated cats that have come and gone quicker than the Swine Flu scare. Aside from that, let us take a look at some of his other moments of douchebaggery:


-He beat up Dee Barnes, female rapper/host of the video show 'Pump It Up' in 1991, for interviewing Ice Cube after the N.W.A. split.


-He aligns himself with acts that are/were arguably more relevant than he is, then wishes them to the cornfields (Eve, Busta Rhymes, Rakim, Raekwon, Joell Ortiz, Glasses Malone, Game, Bishop Lamont, etc.) for seemingly no reason whatsoever.


-He signs new artists, squeezes out a little creative juice for his own purposes, [||]?, then sits them on a shelf, until they go bad or find a better situation. He's almost like Suge Knight, without the cigars, violence or bankruptcy.


-He hasn't even so much as dropped a single. Not even a teaser. Even Big Boi, of Outkast, dropped a single last year, and I don't know anyone who's pining for his next solo outing. In his defense, he did release some designers headphones, though.


A man's only as good as his last accomplishment. Word on the street is that he's losing his touch. I mean sure, Game runs rampant on Twitter espousing about how great 'Detox' will be, but I have a bi-polar cousin. And sometimes my cousin and Game act very similar. Just saying. I wonder what ever happened to the N.W.A. reunion?


3)People don't buy CD's anymore...
Dre's claim(s) to fame has always been his record sales. He's not a rapper (although White folks think he is), so he can't boast about his rhymes, but he can sure as hell brag about the benefits of attaching himself to a rapper's project, especially one who doesn't move a tremendous amount of units until he comes along (see: Xzibit). Undoubtedly, Dre has sold millions upon millions of records worldwide throughout his career, but the industry has changed dramatically over the last 5 years. If you're not T.I., Lil Wayne, Eminem or Kanye West, fans aren't flocking to drop hard hustled recession dollars on your release like they were in Dre's hey day. Today's average rap fan has, more or less, no clue Dre used to be a musical monolith, and would have virtually no idea at all who he was if Marshall and Curtis hadn't been his live action commercials for the last decade. The Old Man Rap market is still in it's early stages, and at this point in his career, he's almost starting over again, so to speak. And before y'all start bringing up Eminem's phenomenal success, trust and believe that every album Em sold was on the strength of Em's lyrical ability. At the very least, Dre gave him that push into popular music status that solidified his achievements. Still, Eminem could've rapped over gorillas grunts and wet farts, and would've most likely had the same productivity.


4)He can never top 'The Chronic', and he knows it...
It doesn't matter what he's doing in the studio right now. The Chronic was, is, and always will be a Hip Hop classic. Classic, in the truest sense of the word. Unless he has a song featuring Satan and Jesus Christ going back and forth over a 'Funky Worm' interpolation, like EPMD, he can never achieve that same level of unexpected brilliance. My guess is that he sits in the studio, alone, and listens to that album, to conceive new ideas from old material. Kinda like a boxer watching footage of his best fight ever. The closest we've gotten to a peek at 'Detox' was that damn Dr. Pepper commercial last year. I don't even like Dr. Pepper, or know a person who does. It tastes like peppermint Kool-Aid, if such a thing were to exist. That said, who gives a damn about the commercial, and who even knew that that was his beat is playing in the background? I did, but then again, my life's not all that exciting, so that only holds so much weight. It's the gift of the curse, or the curse of the gift, depending on your perception. 'The Chronic' single-handedly changed the face of rap, west coast or otherwise, without any gimmicks and no smoke and mirrors. To repeat that feat in today's overwhelming rap industry would seem to be virtually impossible. Even for a living legend. That's not to say that he's not talented, but in this era of live streams, zip drives and downloads, there's literally new music on a daily basis. That's quite a bit of competition. Some people thrive on that type of pressure. Multiply that with the expectations that have been festering for years, and you have enough pressure to burst a pipe. People refer to him as the "Quincy Jones of Rap", but I just say Dre's Dre. No need for extra stigma's for him to live up to. That may be part of the reason we're still waiting on the album. Dre's on of the best producers of our lifetime, no question, but he might have to come to grips with the fact that he may peaked, climaxed and plateau'd all in one phenomenal album-'The Chronic.' That usually doesn't happen repeatedly. Not in Hip Hop, at least. Boy, would I love to be proven wrong.


Maybe, he's trapped in some time warp, like the movie 'Groundhog Day.' He wakes up, complicates his insanity by smoking some superweed, hits the studio, twists some knobs and presses some buttons, calls some niggas to come record, spends the day mixing down vocals and music, goes back home, burns more superweed, passes out drunk and high, wakes up the next day and does it all over again-and nobody has the heart to tell him. There's a pretty good chance Andre's been working on the same song for ten years.


For the record, I'm rooting for Dre, if only because he's been counted out for quite some time, and I love an underdog. [||]. It would be nice to see him jump fresh out of nowhere, but let's be honest with ourselves and each other here. His best bet at this point, is to go with whatever he's been working on for the past decade, and let the chips fall where they may. Surely, some co-producers will blow the whistle and want their credit on the project, and if the ever-fickle public isn't receptive to 'Detox', fuck it, he can just give them their credit, then place the blame them. That's what I would do.