Tomorrow, Dr. Dre is dropping... something. Ice Cube said as much in an interview earlier this week, calling the release in question "an album inspired by the "Compton" movie," referring to the August 14th N.W.A. biopic that he, Dre and director F. Gary Gray have been working on. But will this be just another "music inspired by the film"-style soundtrack? Or something bigger?
With Gray revealing that Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and "a lot of great guest stars" appear on it, and Cube calling it "what everybody's been waiting for," there's the definite possibility of this being even more momentous than the recent "Southpaw" soundtrack Em put together. Now, we'd be foolish expecting Detox to materialize, but here are five things that would make the "Straight Outta Compton" soundtrack the next best thing.
An N.W.A. reunion track
The last time Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and MC Ren collaborated was 2000, the last song released under the N.W.A. name dropped in 1999, and the last time all five surviving original members (Cube, Dre, Ren, DJ Yella and Arabian Prince) appeared on tracks together was the actual Straight Outta Compton album, released in 1988. Because Prince left the group just after their breakout album, getting him back into the fold seems unlikely, but if the rest of the guys were able to settle their past squabbles to help out with the movie, getting them in the studio shouldn't be too much of a struggle.
With guest appearances from Eminem and Kendrick, Dre is clearly trying to keep this thing a bit younger and fresher, but one reunion cut couldn't hurt as long as the beat's right.
An official version of "2Nite"
Back in May, we heard a leaked track from Dre, Kendrick and Jeremih called "2Nite." Even though the sound quality was a bit spotty, it sounded fantastic, interpolating The Roots and Erykah Badu's "You Got Me" and featuring dope verses from both MCs. It's a little hard to envision the song fitting into the film's plot, but i guess "Straight Outta Compton" has to have at least one sex scene.
There's also the Dre/Kendrick track (commonly referred to as "It's Alive") that was previewed in a Beats By Dre commercial in 2013... It's a little more hard-hitting and could also very well be included on the soundtrack.
No previously-released music
This one's a cop-out, as no sane person could say that they'd prefer buying an album made up of songs they already have over one containing only new originals. Even still, in the world of movie soundtracks, it's often unclear whether compilations will involve old or new music, or some haphazard combination of both. The fact that Kendrick and Em are involved in some way is promising, but we're still praying that this doesn't mean that "Not Afraid" and "Compton" are just tacked onto the soundtrack.
In the aforementioned Gray interview, the director also said that it took Dre "15 years to step out and say, ‘I want to do music again’ in the way that he’s doing it," adding more hope for a bunch of new tracks. We'll just have to wait and see.
Something linking back to the original album-- a remix, cover, etc.
Although we don't want this to be another N.W.A. greatest hits album, some connection to the group's storied past would be nice. The original Straight Outta Compton even featured three remixes of the group's previously-released tracks, so they're no strangers to reworking their own music. Maybe get some of L.A.'s young guns to do an updated version of the title track, or get the old gang together for an update on "Gangsta Gangsta." Lord knows we could do with a "Fuck The Police 2015" edition.
Entirely produced by Dre
As we noted in a similar article on The Game's upcoming The Documentary 2, there's been a striking absence of Dr. Dre beats in hip hop in the past few years, and this needs to end now. It's been far too long since Dre produced an entire album on his own.
“He went deep and you can hear some of his influences, with jazz and soul with a little bit of funk,” Gray said about Dre's work on the album. “But it’s really Dre and how he’s evolved and how he’s matured as not only a person, but as an artist. It’s deep and it’s great.”
What would a new batch of Dre beats even sound like in 2015? Retro? Trap-influenced? There are so many directions this could go. With a track record as consistent as Dre's though, greatness is in the cards.