With the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton hitting theaters this Friday, Cube and Dre grace the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone. According to a preview post on the RS site, the two co-founders, as well as DJ Yella and MC Ren, go deep into the history of the group with writer Brian Hiatt. The issue should be on your newsstands by Friday, but RS offers a few interesting tidbits from the piece as a teaser.
The first that grabbed my attention was the revelation that Dr. Dre never even came close to having a proper rough draft of the fabled Detox album:
He tells Hiatt:
“I had between 20 and 40 songs for Detox, and I just couldn’t feel it. Usually I can hear the sequence of an album as I’m going, but I wasn’t able to do that. I wasn’t feeling it in my gut. So I really thought I was done being an artist.”
I think many of us suspected this was the case, so it’s cool to hear Dre actually admit it. He’s since redeemed himself with the release of Compton: A Soundtrack, the amazing new album inspired by the film, so we’ll just call it even.
The second interesting snippet finds Dre speaking on his infamous 1991 assault on Pump It Up host Dee Barnes, which was immortalized on wax when Tim Dog called him out for it on “Fuck Compton”, as well as more recent allegations from his ex-girlfriend Michel’le:
“I made some fucking horrible mistakes in my life,” says Dre. “I was young, fucking stupid. I would say all the allegations aren’t true – some of them are. Those are some of the things that I would like to take back. It was really fucked up. But I paid for those mistakes, and there’s no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again.
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