career, N.W.A. sold millions of records and helped make hard core
rap a lucrative entertainment franchise. The lessons Dre learned
while with N.W.A. were, in all probability, the most important ones
he would gain about life in the music business. What mattered in the
end was not how good your music was but rather how well you were
compensated for it.

After fleeing N.W.A., Dre teamed up with the notorious Marion

“Suge” Knight to launch Death Row Records. Driven by Knight’s
heavy-arm tactics and Dre’s musical wizardry, the first slate of al-
bums released by Death Row went platinum or better, an unprece-
dented achievement. In an entertainment culture always looking for
new faces, the label “broke” new talent like Snoop Doggy Dogg and a
reinvented, thugged-out Tupac Shakur. Despite or maybe because of
their dizzying success, the partnership between Knight and Dre soon
began showing signs of stress. Dre wanted to expand his creative
wings by experimenting with various musical styles and genres. But
Knight insisted that the label maintain a strict focus on the ghetto-
tough anthems that made it an instant hit factory. Knight took on
anybody and everybody—the music industry, critics, politicians,
black spokespersons, and perhaps most significantly, rival rap labels.
The same attitude that propelled Death Row atop the music world
eventually led to its demise.

Gangsta rap took the “keeping it real” mantra, so central in hip

hop, to the extreme. At the height of the genre’s appeal, record labels
had even resorted to marketing the criminal background of rappers
as a way to ensure “street cred.” Eventually, the line between per-
forming gangsta and living gangsta became blurred. Dre was in the
rap game for the music and the money, but not for the mayhem that
had become commonplace at Death Row. He believed the environ-
ment, at the label he helped build, was changing and no longer con-
ducive either to his musical interests or, as time passed, his personal
safety. As Knight, and others around him, plunged deeper into per-
sonal and professional chaos, Dre decided he wanted out.

F E A R O F A W H I T E P L A N E T

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