Credit: Jason Persse

People usually refer to Detox when discussing unreleased Dr Dre albums. Initially set to arrive in 2004, the project never saw the light of day. After years and years of questioning, it became apparent that the much-anticipated follow-up to 2001 would be lost in the ether.

Fans eventually got their wish for a new album, except it was a completely different project. Scrapping Detox, Dre dropped Compton in 2015, which served as a soundtrack album for NWA’s biographical film Straight Outta Compton. It featured vocals from big-name guests like Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Xzibit.

However, Dre once had plans for another body of work that has gone mostly under the radar. During an interview with Vibe in 2010, the Compton legend revealed he was plotting an instrumental album that had been on his bucket list for a while. The project’s theme was going to centre around the solar system, with Dre crafting tracks around his perception of every planet.

“That’s in the works,” he said. “An instrumental album is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I have the ideas for it. I want to call it The Planets. I don’t even know if I should be saying this, but fuck it. It’s just my interpretation of what each planet sounds like.”

It wasn’t just a loose idea either. Dre claimed to have researched planets for around two years, going into detail about his Saturn, Jupiter and Earth records. “I’m gonna go off on that. Just all instrumental,” he explained. “I’ve been studying the planets and learning the personalities of each planet. I’ve been doing this for about two years now just in my spare time so to speak. I wanna do it in surround sound. It’ll have to be in surround sound for Saturn to work.”

He continued, “Because Saturn has the rings and you’ll have to hear the sound going around you the entire time the instrumental is playing. You make Jupiter big. Earth of course has to [sound] wet. You really get into the actual personality of each planet and you go with that.”

Dre has often been called a perfectionist by his collaborators. With that said, concepts have always been important to his recording process. “Without a concept, it’s just another song,” he said. “Because it’s out of sequence. That can make or break a record, the way you sequence it. That is 100% a job in itself, and that happens throughout the entire process of recording an album with me.

“I might take a CD home and listen to a few songs back to back and say, ‘OK, those two songs have to play together on a record.’ Then you wait for that to happen again, and then you have a partial sequence. That’s an art in itself.”

Like Detox, The Planets also got lost on his hard drive, which is likely full of an incredible amount of unheard music. Maybe one day, he’ll dive into the archives and give fans some of the beats he promised to deliver.