ing. Still, despite the sharp contrasts, they both managed to produce
a body of music that recorded in sound and song the mood shifts
that captured their respective generations of young music lovers.

Iovine, perhaps because of his own street-tough background or

sheer desire to make Interscope a success, looked past the hazardous
baggage that followed Suge. “Nobody,” he says, “wanted to be in busi-
ness with Death Row, because, unfortunately, they [other music in-
dustry executives] felt there was an element there that could be
dangerous. But I knew they had great music and that they were a
bunch of guys who wanted to make it out of the ghetto. That’s some-
thing I can understand.”

While Iovine tolerated Suge, he was clearly captivated by Death

Row’s other half, Dr. Dre. If Suge was the business mind and muscle
behind Death Row’s assault on the music world, Dr. Dre provided
the creative vision and punch. The albums that he produced with
N.W.A., rap’s first big crossover gangsta act, achieved platinum-level
sales without the benefit of radio airplay or heavy marketing. It was a
feat that until N.W.A. and other rap acts began accomplishing it in
the early nineties was considered virtually impossible. But then again
who would have thought that Dre’s first album with Death Row, fea-
turing tracks like “The Day the Niggaz Took Over” and “Bitches Ain’t
Shit” would become a pop classic?

. . .

Late in 1992 Interscope and Death Row released their first album, a
Dr. Dre vehicle simply titled

The Chronic. The album’s title was a ref-

erence to an especially potent blend of marijuana that many of Death
Row’s key figures enjoyed smoking while they worked and played.
Led by Dr. Dre, Death Row’s artistry, like the concoction its first
album celebrated, was a blistering blend of diƒerent musical stylings,
kitsch, and dark humor that brought an aura of pop sophistication to
gangsta rap.

The Chronic created an elaborate texture of sounds and

images comprised of blaxploitation and documentary films, seven-

H I P H O P M AT T E R S

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