“It’s so crazy when you’re waiting for something this massive to come out. “Finally the butterflies are gone,” Dre said on his most recent “Pharmacy” episode. ‘Straight Outta Compton’: Photos of N.W.A on film and in real life Nielsen reported that the album generated 11 million streams throughout the week in the U.S.ĭre has been heavily promoting the album and the movie, which he produced, on his radio show “The Pharmacy,” which airs on Apple’s new global radio station Beats 1. Plenty of people also streamed Dre’s “Compton,” though they could do so only through Apple Music and not rivals such as Spotify or Rhapsody.
In terms of streams, tracks from the N.W.A catalog were up more than 100% in the last week, according to the Swedish service Spotify. Movies like “Ray” (about Ray Charles) and “Walk the Line” (about Johnny Cash) renewed interest in their subjects’ old recordings. Best-of compilations from N.W.A and Ice Cube also earned noticeable increases.įULL COVERAGE: ‘Straight Outta Compton’ and N.W.A’s legacyīakula said the sales were similar to past biopics. Dre’s “The Chronic” and “2001” soared 95% and 86% respectively during the week.
“You’re probably going to notice it even more this week as people see the movie.” “Ever since anyone’s been talking about the movie, people have been going back and rediscovering and consuming it in a lot of different ways,” Nielsen analyst David Bakula said. It landed 30th on the overall album chart, surging from 83rd in the week before. The group’s 1988 release “Straight Outta Compton” sold nearly 8,500 copies in the week that ended Aug. Other N.W.A-related recordings got sales bumps as well. 2 in overall album sales, behind country star Luke Bryan’s “Kill the Lights.” It easily topped the R&B/hip-hop chart for the week, and it came in at No. Still, the nearly parallel unveiling helped the record move a robust 295,000 units in the United States in its first week, according to Nielsen Music. “I just wanted to do something special for Compton,” the producer said.The Dre release, dubbed “Compton,” is not the movie’s soundtrack nor is it an official tie-in. I just wasn’t feeling it.”Ĭompton, however, is an album he’s proud of. I worked my ass off on it, I don’t think I did a good enough job, and I couldn’t do that to my fans and I couldn’t do that to myself, to be perfectly honest with you. I’m gonna keep it all-the-way 1,000 with you, seriously. “The reason Detox didn’t come out was because I didn’t like it. “This is something you’re not gonna hear many artists say,” he said. Regarding why he put the kibosh on Detox, Dre explained on The Pharmacy that it wasn’t up to snuff. “I kept it under wraps, and now the album is finished.
“During principal photography, I felt myself going to the studio and being so inspired by the movie that I started recording an album,” Dre said on his Beats 1 program The Pharmacy earlier this month. Dre” and serves as a companion piece to the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton, which will hit theaters next Friday. Compton, Dre has said, will be his “grand finale.”Ĭompton is subtitled “A Soundtrack by Dr.
Its release also signals an end to years of speculation about the release of Detox, the long-in-gestation, mythical album which he says he has abandoned. Dre songs and feature appearances by Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, the Game and Xzibit, among others. When it comes out, the record will boast 16 new Dr. We would just go into the studio, put up the track and for some reason, the stars aligned and we killed it, man.” “As a matter of fact, most of the lyrics are written by us three. “The new artists I got like King Mez and Justus, these two guys actually came in and just grinded with me throughout the entire project,” Dre said.
Speaking to Lowe, Dre mentioned the help he got from emerging artists on the album.