It's no secret that Dr. Dre has had some help with his production in the past. Scott Storch, Mel-Man, and Colin Wolfe are a few of those at least partially responsible for some of the rapper/producer's biggest tracks. Another name who has appeared in the writing credits of Dre's albums is Dat Nigga Daz aka Daz Dillinger.
It's documented that Daz played a pretty large role in the production on Doggystyle, with writing credits on 6 tracks, but according to a new interview with Suge Knight, he may have not been given the credit he deserved.
The Death Row mogul spoke with Rolling Stone about Snoop's classic debut on it's 20th anniversary, speaking on the rapper's trouble with the law, the impact the album had on the label itself, and of course, the production process behind the record.
Read some excerpts from the interview below, and read the full thing here.
What do you remember about Doggystyle's production?
[It] was was pretty much luck. Everybody thought [Dr. Dre] would be doing the records, but Daz pretty much did the whole album. And at the end of the day, once Daz finished it, everybody wanted Andre to get the credit. Next thing I know Daz is having a meeting with Andre and them and came back and said, "It's okay, give me a few bucks and I'll sign anything over that says produced by Andre instead of me."
"Ain't No Fun"… one of the homies from The Swans [ed note: the Mad Swan Bloods, or MSB, are a Los Angeles subset of The Bloods street gang] named Pooh, all them dudes already had a record done. And they came and played it for us in the studio. They played us the demo. Everybody looked at it like it was alright. And then after they left, shit, everybody was chopping that same beat.
What do you remember most about what went into making Doggystyle?
We were able to make sure [Snoop] didn't go to prison to make the album. We only had one song done, and then after that it was the [Philip Woldemariam] murder case and the trial. When we got ready to start the trial, $5 million had to be paid to a legal team. And at the time Snoop never sold no records. Jimmy [Iovine], Interscope, those guys were saying they're not going to participate in trying to help keep him out of prison, because they didn't think they were capable of doing it. Because of the simple fact that it was a murder case. If he would have got found guilty, he'd have died in prison. He'd have been there the rest of his life.
Did Snoop think he was going to go to jail?
Everybody thought he was going to go. A few times in court they asked him to stand up, and Snoop would actually get weak in the knees and fall back down. It was a lot of pressure. But it was still good to be able to come through and pull that off for him because it opened it up a bunch of doors and showed the world a different side of rap music.
Do you think Doggystyle solidified Death Row as a label?
When we put out The Chronic people felt there's no way in the world somebody can ever do an album and it come out that well. When The Chronic was out, even Snoop will tell you, if he came on the Interscope side, he didn't see Jimmy [Iovine] any of those guys call Snoop in the office, chop it up with him… because he wasn't the one. And then when Doggystyle came out, shit, he couldn't walk in there without them trying to give him some weed. People thought it couldn't get no better. But the Dogg Pound came in and done well. And then came Tupac. It wasn't Tupac because he was a new artist. Tupac was on Interscope the whole time. They couldn't break a record on him. They couldn't make him a superstar. But the minute I got Pac out of prison…
Any last thoughts on Doggystyle?
Snoop is an artist that is a great artist. So it's good to give him his props about how great Doggystyle was. What made Doggystyle historic is the work on it. If you look at the album cover, everybody sued us and said it was degrading women. But even the guys who did the artwork, who wrote songs, who participated in videos, they were guys who were either wearing red or wearing blue. . . and it was a situation where they all got along. We'd go places and you might see twenty blue rags and twenty red rags. And that was never before seen.