Dr. Dre Drops New Album “Compton” Early

Published on August 7, 2015.

Photo by Picture Perfect / Rex Feature

No one every really did forget about Dre, even though it took 16 years for the prolific rapper to drop his third album, which he did one day early to the delight of fans.

Dr. Dre released “Compton,” the official soundtrack to the upcoming film Straight Outta Compton, late on Thursday, August 6, making it available to stream on Apple Music.

Just because Dre hasn’t been releasing new music in all this time doesn’t mean he has been out of the industry as many know him as one of the most notable mentors of big names like Kendrick Lamar and, of course, Eminem. He is also the founder of Beats Electronics, which he sold to Apple in 2014 for $3 billion, a deal which made Dre the highest-paid musician despite not having released any new music.

The 16 track album features a ton of iconic rappers and part of the proceeds will be donated to an arts center that Dre plans to have built in Compton.

“I feel it’s the right thing to do and I hope everybody appreciates the work I put into this album. I’ve been really trying to do something special for Compton and just couldn’t quite figure out what it was. [Compton Mayor Aja Brown] actually had the idea and she was already in the process of working on it. I said, ‘Boom, this is what we should do.'”