by Dan O

Aftermath is a championship team that only practices and never plays the game. Every day is more practice, the beats just get cleaner and drier and less human, the songs never turn out good enough.

Dr. Dre is not a top 5 all time producer. Dr. Dre is not a good businessman. In fact, Dr. Dre is one of the worst businessmen in the history of rap.  That might sound outrageous on its face. The data is irrefutable. The reason Dr. Dre is thought of as one of the best producers in rap history is that he presented two landmark projects that sent ripples through the culture and industry. The Chronic showed us a level of clean sound and vision that we had never heard before. 2001 affirmed Eminem’s undisputed position on the top of the industry and brought Dre all the way back. The Xxplosive beat alone had production ramifications for years. No matter what qualms you have Dre changed the game and nothing changes that.

This is an argument that buries its head in the sand. A producer is not only his best moments. The same way a quarterback is accountable for interceptions, a pitcher accountable for walks, what Dr. Dre didn’t do is inexcusable. If you pull up the Wikipedia for aftermath under former artists you will find 37 former artists and only 8 ever had a project released. Some of these stories you know. Famously, Rakim had creative differences because Dre wanted him to rap about killing people when Rakim had NEVER done that. How can you call Dr. Dre a great producer when he stood in front of Rakim and told him he needed to kill more people in his music? Dre continually showed a rigid inability to adapt to the styles and talent of people he was working with.  Rakim was on Aftermath from 2000-2003 with no release to show for it. Before that Dre had already dropped Eve without releasing an album, worked with King Tee from 1996-2001 and released him without anything coming of it. Think about that?! King Tee is not just one of the best rappers of his era but a tough as nails classic West Coast emcee. You can try to make the argument that Dre had trouble cracking the code on East Coast emcees and that’s why Rakim and The Firm didn’t work out…but King Tee!!!! You had 5 years with King Tee and left with NOTHING. Unacceptable.

The legends who wasted years on Aftermath get to tell their story. It’s on record. The truly infuriating part of the conversation is the up and comers. Joell Ortiz released The Brick: Bodega Chronicles on Koch records while sitting on the Aftermath bench for two years. Flint, Michigan emcee Jon Connor was dominating the mixtape scene when he was signed to Aftermath in 2013 and left in 2019 with no debut album or control over any of the music he made in those 6 years . These are pure lyricists we are talking about. People who were destroying tracks and mentioned amongst the top unsigned talent at the time. Jon Connor is a great example of someone who could have been what Meek Mill became for Maybach Music. If he was ever allowed to create.

The crushing supernatural perfectionism of Dre is often discussed as super cool genius stuff. Sanding songs down to the perfect sheen, we love to exoticize the toiling of great artists. That was all cute until Detox rotted in public. For years and years artists gave excited updates on Detox. It must be understood that Slim Shady LP went 5x platinum, 2001 went 7x platinum. Marshall Mathers LP went diamond. Dre had an unprecedented level of success and with that, access. Everyone wanted to be on Aftermath. I remember writing mixtape reviews and whenever news broke that one of my favorites signed to Aftermath it was like they died or joined a terrible cult. You had to say goodbye to them. The perfectionist tendencies of Dre are public enemy number one but right after that is the terrible lifeless stable of in house producers they kept. I remember gasping in frustration seeing countless DJ Khalil production credits, knowing every song would end up boring. The polish Dre looked for sanded down all the interesting edges in sound, nothing could ever surprise you or show a spot of grime. This sense of lifeless cleanliness digested everything.

Remember when Dr. Dre released Compton in 2015? We all checked the tracklist and said “Dang, Anderson Paak is on 6 songs…who is this cat?” Paak immediately followed his impressive contributions on the project with his own album Malibu the next year. It went gold and he was on his way to superstardom. That’s how Bishop Lamont thought it would go for him a decade before. Bishop was signed in 2005 from the mixtape space. He was hyper lyrical in a Crooked I style but with song structure, hooks, themes. Bishop Lamont was a lay up for Aftermath. He refused to sit around. Bishop came in with a 2pac philosophy to be as productive as possible every day. Over the course of his 5 years on Aftermath Bishop made over 700 songs. For years he was the Detox update guy, giving salient in depth promotional tidbits to media on new batches of promising songs. He’s now listed under the former artists tab of the Aftermath Wikipedia with no projects released while with the label. 700 songs plus that will never see the light of day.

The story is that a top music executive came to visit Dre and the Aftermath gang in the studio and summed up the insanity in a metaphor. Aftermath is a championship team that only practices and never plays the game. Every day is more practice, the beats just get cleaner and drier and less human, the songs never turn out good enough. Stat Quo sat on the bench for 6 years trying to get a debut out only to be dropped over an argument about a single.

Being an emcee isn’t just rapping. Picking beats is a part of the skill set an emcee should be judged on. The output itself should be a part of the equation. What if your dope bars never become good songs? That matters. Apply this to producers. It is a producers job to get the best out of who they collaborate with. It does matter if you can’t adapt to helping different kinds of emcees. Dre’s perfectionism isn’t a beloved genius trait, it ruined many careers. Bishop Lamont never got to drop The Reformation on Aftermath and a quote of his lives in my head . “I know so many people that are in unmarked graves in Aftermath history that will never be known,”

I want to close this by being clear about who I am. Chronic was probably the first hip hop album I heard front to back. It was a revolution. I was die hard for Death Row. In 1996 I was watching Been There Done That video realizing that the music video he was watching in the beginning was RBX from his Death Row diss album The RBX Files. I was so hype for the future of Aftermath obsessing about how many incredible West Coast emcees could benefit from Dre’s talent. So many artists in the history of music are undone by the horrible chaos of life. I think of D.O.C. and the severe car crash that ruined his voice or the heart attack that took Baby Huey after Curtis Mayfield wanted to sign him. None of this exists within the Aftermath graveyard of talent. From Slim Shady LP onward they had the world in their hands. Every door was open. It was Dre that shut every single one with his primary character trait, the same one 2pac hated, his aimless narcissistic perfectionism. I am resigned to the fact that those who write the official history of Dre will be saying “NWA then Chronic then 2001 then headphone genius” to clean all of this up. As long as I have a voice I will speak for the graveyard.