10 Year Anniversary: Dr. Dre - 2001 - Internet/Dubcc/Dubcnn - Drop Your Comments

[D-Nice]

Ahead of its time. I remember working at Wherehouse when that came out and I got a promo copy of it. And even the leftover tracks helped Xzibit, Snoop, Eminem, etc with their solo albums as well.

[K.Dub]

Bumping it as I type.

[Dre-Day]

one of the best albums

[Fatdodger]

Come on Doc its been ten i know 2001 is a classic but we want new classics. In 2000 the only cd i have in my sony discman was Chronic 2001

[Allpaul]

 You could see the immediate impact when everything that came on the radio for the next few years sounded just like it.. (Irv Gotti, I'm looking at you!).. Let's see if Dre can do it again with Detox!

[MediumL]

Bit young to remember when it dropped although I remember people singing parts of the Next Episode at school. When I first was getting into rap I heard Still Dre in the car and it changed music forever for me.

Amazing album and brilliantly represented the West Coast. If only every album could seek to push boundaries like this one...

[woof]

classic hip-hop album, period.

2001 went through some troubles too with Suge stealing the original Chronic 2000 title or even Lucasfilm suing Dr Dre for using the THX sound http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5922699/lucasfilm_taking_dr_dre_to_court

here is a throwback article published 2 days before the album release of Dre talking to NY Times where he said the album was originally a mixtape and then it was made like a movie :


DR. DRE, who has sold more than 20 million albums as a rapper and producer, feels like an underdog again. ''For the last couple of years, there's been a lot of talk out on the streets about whether or not I can still hold my own, whether or not I'm still good at producing,'' he said. ''That was the ultimate motivation for me. Magazines, word of mouth and rap tabloids were saying I didn't have it any more. What more do I need to do? How many platinum records have I made? O.K., here's the album -- now what do you have to say?''

Dr. Dre, 34, was talking about his second solo album, ''Dr. Dre 2001,'' in the lounge of a midtown Manhattan hotel on the afternoon before his Oct. 23 appearance on ''Saturday Night Live.'' Wearing an oversized Fubu jersey and fielding handshakes from his Avirex-branded entourage as he talked, he was rousing himself after waking up late. The reason, he said, was that his wife had made him play the album five times the night before. ''She's big on it,'' he said.

On many of the album's songs, Dr. Dre raps like a hard-partying character surrounded by eager, trampy women. His wife, Nicole, whom he married in 1996, doesn't mind. ''For awhile, right when I got married, I was kind of turned off from using the type of language I was using and the type of records that I was doing,'' Dr. Dre said. ''It was, like, O.K., I'm married now, so maybe I need to tone it down. And my records stopped coming out as good as they should. So she got with me: 'What's up? I want to hear the hardcore stuff.' She was a big reason for me getting back on track.''

Hardcore means a return to the staples of gangsta rap: boasts, threats, shootouts, marijuana and sex. On ''2001,'' Dr. Dre said: ''Everything you hear is planned. It's a movie, with different varieties of situations. So you've got buildups, touching moments, aggressive moments. You've even got a 'Pause for Porno.' It's got everything that a movie needs.''

The album started out with a different approach, Dr. Dre said. It was originally going to be like a mix tape, the quasi-bootleg collections of songs that disc jockeys make, with songs connected by interludes of fancy turntable effects. But during the year and a half that Dr. Dre worked on ''2001,'' other rap albums appeared with the mix-tape format, so he moved in the opposite direction: clean, spartan production with a minimum of turntable scratching. ''I don't make my records for the clubs, the radio or nothing like that,'' he said. ''I make my records basically for people to play in their cars or just play in their houses when they're cleaning up. I believe that's where people listen to the most music: in the car.''

His albums, he said, are simply entertainment, not an advertisement for the lifestyle of the gangsters and players in his raps. ''I'm not trying to send out any messages or anything with this record,'' he said. ''I just basically do hard-core hip-hop and try to add a touch of dark comedy here and there. A lot of times the media just takes this and tries to make it into something else when it's all entertainment first. Any person that listens to these records and wants to imitate them is an idiot, unless they just want to imitate the fact that it's a good record. You should't take it too seriously. It's not like you're going to go see a play or a movie or something and want to come out to be Rambo.''

Dr. Dre is already planning his next projects. One is a possible tour with Snoop Dogg that would present a full-fledged hip-hop musical, with actors portraying the stories from the songs. ''For instance, an undercover cop gets killed on stage, and then me and Snoop would come out and do 'Deep Cover.' It could work,'' he said.

He is looking for a singer to make an album of hip-hop soul songs that he has stockpiled. He's producing Eminem's next album. He is also contemplating a revival of N.W.A. to include two other original members of the group -- Ice Cube and Ren -- plus Snoop Dogg. ''We'll have to see how the business goes on that,'' he said. The album is tentatively planned for the Christmas 2000 buying season.

''I'm a winner, man, I'm a leader,'' Dr. Dre said, an underdog no more. ''I've got to do this, I've got to keep doing it. I want to do another 10 years and set a record -- the longest person to be in this business successfully. And I want to keep shocking people like, 'Man, what is he going to next?' ''

[D-Nice]

The crazy thing for me is that this album is PERFECT to bump in the summertime and it came out in November. I remember they pushed the date back a couple times. But damn near till 2001, this album was getting steady rotation for almost a year and a half.

[D-Nice]

You know your album has classics when the radio station makes homemade edited versions of Fuck You to play on the radio. LMAO.

[50]

EPIC album.. only grodt was better 

[Fatdodger]

Big EGOS still gives me the chills to this day the funniest shit on Big EGOS is when Hittman hits that drive by and car just burns rubber and it really sounds like it aint going nowhere.

[Leggy Hendrix]

damn it doesnt feel like this came out 10 years ago!!

timeless piece of music, probably the greatest album that will ever come out of the west coast imo, still the benchmark for everything else the west has to offer, and in some ways it was a gift and a curse...if Dre hadnt set the standard so high and raised the bar the way he did with this album, maybe we'd have seen Detox released by now  

dope thread  

[Okka]

How many times was Dr. Dre sued because of some of the samples on "2001"? He got sued over the intro and "Lets Get High" too.

The Fatback Band also sued Dr. Dre over alleged infringement regarding its song "Backstrokin'" in his song "Let's Get High" from the 2001 album; Dr. Dre was ordered to pay $1.5 million to the band in 2003.

[Twentytwofifty]

It was in my senior year in high school and I was anticipating this album like crazy.  Back then a local CD shop started selling album as soon as they got them so I didn't have to wait until the Tuesday, got it the Thursday before.  Remember people bumping that in the high school cafe the next day. 
Great album, was playing that CD consistently for a while. 

[Fatdodger]

I use to think that maybe i was little slow because i use to bump that shit so much and i didnt get tired of it i was like what the fuck why cant i get tired of this shit why doesnt it get played out its been 10 years AND IM STILL NOT TIRED OF IT.