The one rapper who brutally told The D.O.C. to quit rapping
The D.O.C., right at the point where his solo rap career was taking off in 1989, suddenly succumbed to disaster. He was in a life-changing car crash, and it forever altered his life and career’s trajectory.
He had only recently released his first solo album, No One Can Do It Better, which had been produced by Dr Dre. The album made it into the top 20 of the Billboard 200, which, for that time, was a good performance for a hip-hop album, while the critics tended to view it kindly, too. The D.O.C.’s career was on the up.
But towards the end of ’89, a nightmare situation occurred. He was driving home from a party one night, when he fell asleep at the wheel. His vehicle lost control and crashed, which sent D.O.C., who hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, through the window. He literally smashed his face into a tree.
The fact that he’d survived the ordeal was something of a miracle, but he was hurt badly. He had to undergo 21 hours of surgery to save his life, which, while successful, did lead to complications. A breathing tube ended up damaging his larynx.
For a man who makes his living by rapping, this was a really significant injury. His voice was very different when he eventually recovered, meaning the instrument that had brought him musical success no longer served him in the same way as before. His voice sounded too different.
The D.O.C.’s music career had been doing so well up until the crash, and he wanted to get it back up and running again when he was fit and able. But his altered voice was a problem, and only one person had the guts to tell him so. That was Dre.
“Dre’s my brother on another level,” The D.O.C. said on the Life After With David Vobora podcast earlier in 2025. “He’s the only guy that’s ever told me, ‘Don’t rap. You don’t sound good. They think you’re the king, you should go out like that.’”
That must have been extremely difficult to hear, but the D.O.C. really respects Dre for saying it. “Imagine the love that it takes to tell somebody something like that,” he said, decades after the fact. “That’s real and he’s always been that backbone for me.”
The D.O.C. did follow Dre’s advice, and he stepped back from rapping. He wrote lyrics for N.W.A., Dre himself, and Snoop Dogg in the years that followed, occasionally chipping in with some small vocal parts in the studio. When he felt more ready, he later returned with albums of his own.