The reason why Dr Dre went on a musical hiatus
Dr Dre has been making music since the mid-1980s, which, to state the blatantly obvious, is an awfully long time. Producing beats and rapping have been central to his life for literally decades, but by 2011, he’d decided that he needed a break from it all. He announced his hiatus from the scene.
Speaking with The Fader in November of that year, Dre mentioned that he was, at that time, producing music for two artists: Slim the Mobster and a young up-and-comer named Kendrick Lamar. But, once those two projects had been completed, that would be it for a while. He needed to step away for a while.
“These are the next two artists I’m working on, Slim Da Mobster and Kendrick Lamar,” he said. “I think that’s when I’m gonna just wrap it up for a minute because I’ve been working on music for 27 years now and the longest I’ve ever been out of the studio in 27 years has been two weeks.”
Nearly three decades of constant music work had, finally, taken its toll on Dre, and he’d decided that he needed to step away from it all for a while to focus on other things. That wasn’t to say he’d grown tired of music in and of itself, but other things needed to take priority for a spell.
“I’m never gonna stop music,” he clarified, “it’s like air to me. So I’mma take a little bit of a break. Enjoy some time with the family til I get that itch to get back in.”
It seems fair to suggest that it wasn’t entirely about the family. Dre, by this point in time, had already been working on his Beats brand, which he founded alongside Jimmy Iovine in 2006. By the time that Dre was giving this interview to The Fader, the brand and its products had already become extremely successful—but he was looking to grow it even more.
“I’m shocked myself as to how well they’re doing,” he said. “We’re gonna keep new and exciting product coming. We’re trying to eventually be second to Apple. And I don’t think that’s a bad position.”
Just three years after Dre uttered those words, Beats was actually bought out by Apple for a reported $3.4billion. At the time, this imbued him with a reputation as the “richest man in hip-hop.” But technically speaking, he was no longer competing with Apple. He was one of their employees.
Dre’s hiatus from the music scene clearly didn’t mean he wasn’t busy, with Beats becoming remarkably valuable around this period. But his music work didn’t dry up, either. He headlined Coachella in early 2012, and it wasn’t long before he was back in the studio again, too.
Dre had, over the course of many years, tried and failed to create an album called Detox, and, in 2015, he finally admitted defeat. He cancelled the project and instead announced another album, Compton, which was ultimately released alongside the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton. His musical hiatus was definitively over, but he hadn’t exactly slowed down anyway. He’d kept busy during his so-called “hiatus.”