Dr. Dre

Latest Articles

The Big Hurt: Pratt falls

Plus Ringo shills, Yanni sucks
Spencer Pratt, one of the vacuous props on MTV's realityesque moron drama The Hills , has his beady eyes set on a rap career.
By DAVID THORPE | June 08, 2009

Busta Rhymes | Back on My B.S.

Universal Motown (2009)
Increasingly surrounded by Soulja Boys and Lil Waynes, Busta Rhymes has of late taken on the look of hip-hop's Father Time.
By MIKAEL WOOD | June 02, 2009

. . . but he plays with one in LA. As hip-hop's newest secret weapon, Dawaun Parker is helping resuscitate rap's biggest stars.
Around this time four years ago, contemporary hip-hop tastemaker Dawaun Parker faced the same dilemma that most soon-to-be music-school grads negotiate: should he become a performer, a songwriter, or a barista?
By CHRIS FARAONE | May 18, 2009

How low can you go?

Murder by Death live at the Middle East Downstairs, February 7, 2009
"Turn down the bass!" a well-meaning fan finally yelled last Saturday night, about a half-hour into Murder by Death's sold-out performance downstairs at the Middle East.
By FRANKLIN SOULTS | February 10, 2009

Norman Mailer’s ‘White Negro’ gets the treatment

Action speaks!
Long before suburban kids began digging Dr. Dre and Tupac, an earlier generation of young white people venerated the jazz and swing music of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s.
By IAN DONNIS | October 15, 2008

Why? so serious?

Social norms and musical tropes are shunned on the excellent Alopecia
The lines between avant-garde hip-hop, pop, and indie rock continue to blur with defiance on Alopecia, the third album by the Anticon trio Why?.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | September 10, 2008

The silent rapper

What the hell has Rakim been up to?
One of the most influential hip-hop MCs of all time, Rakim brought rap from its sing-songy beginnings into its late-’80s golden era with his dense lyrics and virtuoso internal rhyme structures.
By BEN WESTHOFF | July 21, 2008

On-point tips

A Checklist For A Tribe Called Quest’s Reunion Show
A Checklist For A Tribe Called Quest’s Reunion Show
By CHRIS FARAONE | July 22, 2008

A night in Guantánamo

Staying in a replica cell, with no waterboarding included
I’d volunteered to spend the night in the replica cell (which is modeled on the ones at Gitmo) because we’ve all heard stories about unlivable conditions at Gitmo but can’t come close to imagining what it must be like.
By JEFF INGLIS | June 18, 2008

Ho down

Remembering the glory days of hip-hop misogyny
Hip-hop has always had a bad rap ( duh-hyuk! ) for misogyny, but when I think back on the long history of articles criticizing the lyrical treatment of women, I have to chuckle.
By DAVID THORPE | June 02, 2008

N.W.A.

Straight Outta Compton, 20th Anniversary Edition | Ruthless/Priority
Twenty years later, Straight Outta Compton holds up better than most of the East Coast albums released around the same time.
By BEN WESTHOFF | December 17, 2007

Chairmen of the boards

Our critics pick the 14 producers with the fattest, meanest beats
Not unlike Swedish, Tagalog, and Esperanto, music is a language, with its own conjugations and (lewdly) dangling participles.
By PHOENIX MUSIC STAFF | October 18, 2007

Get cirrus

Mike Clouds teams up to go solo on Blown Speaker Project
If you know Mike Clouds’s work, it’s likely because of his team-up with A-Frame.
By SAM PFEIFLE | July 18, 2007

Serious simians

A day spent with Arctic Monkeys reveals the band to be, well, regular guys
It’s a rock star’s prerogative to get up every morning in the afternoon.
By MATT ASHARE | May 18, 2007

Putting the pop into the Pops

Boston Pops! Opening Night, Symphony Hall, May 9, 2007
The screams came from the second balcony at Symphony Hall on Wednesday.
By JIM SULLIVAN | May 11, 2007

Cheap trills

Hyperbole? Not even close.
As you’re hopefully aware, the Virginia coke-rap duo Clipse are coming to the Station on Saturday.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 28, 2007

Dead, or immortal?

Nas’s album title challenges a generation
When Chuck D challenges the status quo, a bunch of fortysomethings nod their heads, but Nas can put the young rappers on the defensive.
By MATTHEW GASTEIER | January 24, 2007

O RLY? YA RLY

The LemmingTrail holiday party, Great Scott, December 22, 2006
“It smells like a middle-school dance,” said username andysad at the LemmingTrail message-board holiday party at Great Scott last Friday.
By WILL SPITZ | December 29, 2006

Larger than life

Two kinds of triumph from Jay-Z and the Game
Although predictions that Jay-Z, in his comeback, would pull in the biggest sales numbers of the year were proved wrong (at 680,000, his Def Jam release Kingdom Come ranks third behind Rascal Flatts and Justin Timberlake in 2006), that’s hardly the story worth telling.
By MATTHEW GASTEIER | December 06, 2006

On the racks: August 29, 2006

Tego Calderon, Bob Dylan, Ray LaMontagne . . .
. . . plus Method Man, Motorhead, and Pete Yorn
By MATT ASHARE | August 30, 2006

Heatseekers

The rise and triumph of Luny Tunes
When in 2002 Francisco "Luny" Saldana and Victor “Tunes” Cabrera left their jobs at a Harvard University cafeteria to make music full-time as Luny Tunes, the word “reggaetón” meant nothing to most English speakers. Listen to five Luny Tunes classics
By SIMON W. VOZICK-LEVINSON | July 25, 2006