It bears a striking resemblance to a brand of cigarette rolling papers called ‘Zig Zag’. What you might not know is that the albums cover art takes this one step further. Pretty much everyone can work out what the album title is referring to. 06 – The Cover Art is a Homage to Rolling Papers Dre was instantly impressed and the rest is history. The story goes that Snoop recorded a freestyle rap over the En Vogue song ‘Hold On’ which somehow got heard by Dre when setting the album up. In a way, this was the first real indication of Dre’s amazing talent for spotting new rap superstars like Eminem. The truth though is that he was a real unknown to many when Dre handpicked him to star on many of the tracks. Many listeners who come across this album now assume that Snoop Dogg was already the famous name of today when he made it. The Chronic 07 – Snoop Dogg Was An Unknown When you add up how much that is over time, then you can bet it made it much easier for Eazy-E to ignore the name-calling! What many do not know though is that Eazy-E probably didn’t care! It turns out that the deal he made to release Dre from Ruthless Records gave him up to 50 cents for every copy sold. This can be seen throughout the lyrics in many of ‘The Chronic’ tracks and even on the video for one of the albums singles, where Eazy-E is parodied. It’s common knowledge that Eazy-E and Dre fell out when N.W.A split up. This made him remove a track called ‘Mr Officer’ from the agreed running order to avoid any harsh criticism coming his way. Indeed, Ice-T’s song ‘Cop Killer’ had be on the receiving end of a furious backlash just before Dre was set to put his own album out.
This mainly came down to concerns from people over its violent lyrics and imagery which many thought could be a bad influence on young people. 09 – One Song Was PulledĪs noted above, the period in which ‘The Chronic’ was released saw hip hop music and rap under fire.
In the end though, Interscope stepped in to save the day. The political background of America had seen an ongoing negative reaction to gangsta rap and this along with Dre’s ongoing problems with previous label Ruthless Records put many off. However, things did not go as planned! While many thought it a superb album musically, it came with a lot of baggage that they did not want to take on. Dre had fully recorded all the tracks and the artwork had been done to give a complete package to go to distributors with. However, after recording it in the summer of 1992, Dre and his new label Death Row ran into trouble finding anyone to help them get it released. 10 – Dre Had Trouble Finding a Distributor to Release Itįor a record that is now regarded as a classic and sold so many copies, this sounds crazy. Here are the ten most little-known facts about Dr Dre’s ‘The Chronic’. Released in 1992, it peaked at number 3 in the US charts and has gone onto sell 5 million copies in the US alone! It was also notable for its G-Funk style production which proved truly revolutionary and the introduction of awesome rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg to the world.īut while we know a lot about this amazing album, there are some secret facts that you may not have come across before. This all changed when he dropped ‘The Chronic’ At the time, people knew Dre was talented but few could have predicted just how great his next album would be. First starting out as a founding member of trail-blazing gangsta rap group N.W.A, he found himself going solo after they broke up in acrimony. Hip-hops first billionaire, he is not only a legendary rapper and producer but also a successful businessman with ventures such as his Beats headphones. Pretty much everyone on the planet knows who Dr Dre is.