Dr. Dre to Release New Album as ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Soundtrack

Dr. Dre will release a new album under the banner of a ‘Straight Outta Compton’ soundtrack, though it will not come out on Saturday as rumored. Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images North America

Dr. Dre will finally end fans’ 16-year wait for a new album when the rapper releases his Straight Outta Compton soundtrack, which will consist of new music entirely produced by The Chronic mastermind, a source tells Rolling Stone. Dre is expected to confirm the album, the companion piece to the N.W.A biopic, on his Beats 1 radio showThe Pharmacy this Saturday.

“It’s mega. It’s Dr. Dre, it’s what everybody’s been waiting for,” Ice Cube told the Rise & Grind Morning Show. “It’s definitely a dope record, and he’s dropping it all on the same day.”

It’s unclear whether any of the music destined for Dre’s Straight Outta Compton soundtrack was originally slotted for Detox, Dre’s long-in-the-works-and-indefinitely-postponed follow-up to 1999’s 2001. For the new album, Dre has enlisted protégés like Kendrick Lamar and Eminem and what’s being labeled as an N.W.A reunion, although the exact members involved from that iconic group remains unknown.

Dre reportedly began working on Detox in 2001, and by 2008, Snoop Dogg confirmed that Detox was “finished,” whetting fans’ appetites for new music from the G-Funk icon.

Dre later hinted at Detox during a Dr. Pepper ad campaign in 2009, the same year numerous unmixed tracks reportedly ripped from the LP ”“ tracks from sessions with T.I., 50 Cent and R. Kelly ”“ were leaked. The following year, Dre released “Kush.” a track featuring Dre alongside Snoop Dogg and Akon. He followed that up with the Grammy-nominated “I Need a Doctor” co-starring Eminem and Skyler Gray in 2011; the trio performed the song at the 2011 Grammy Awards, which marked a rare live appearance by Dre. “Chillin’,” another rumored Detox track, leaked as well in 2011. 50 Cent then said in 2012 that Detox could arrive as an EP.

Finally, in 2014, Detox collaborators like Floetry’s Marsha Ambrosius and Aftermath producer Dawaun Parker both said that Dre was indeed working on a new album, and that Dre had amassed a musical vault with hundreds of beats. However, both revealed that Detox itself was dead since Dre wanted to distance himself from the project following the 2009 song leaks. “To me, the music is there,” Parker told Shots Fired in September 2014 of Dre’s new album. “I feel like one day, he’s gonna wake up and say ‘Here. Today’s the day. I’ll put it out.'”

During a March 2015 radio interview, Dre first revealed that he was working on a soundtrack for Straight Outta Compton. “I’m working on something right now. I don’t want to put it out there just yet and say that I’m definitely gonna put it out. But I’m really feeling what I’m working on right now,” Dre said. “This would be a record that’s inspired by the movie.”