(Pre-order sales have already propelled the album to No. Instead, a new project, Compton, will drop on August 7, just in time for the theatrical release of the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton. Last week, during his Beats 1 radio program The Pharmacy, Dre announced that Detox, his long-awaited follow-up to 2001, had been scrapped. Now, after a string of successes in the role of producer, businessman and "big homie" to much of the West Coast, the question of Dre's ability to deliver has become an issue of time (his last album dropped in 1999), age (not a lot of 50-year-olds make crucial hip-hop) and relevance (nor do a lot of tech billionaires who sell their companies to Apple, as he did with Beats By Dre). In both cases, it wasn't just Dre's skills as a producer that kept him in the spotlight it was also his ear as a talent-spotting A&R man. The former split helped give rise to Death Row, Snoop Dogg and the Dogg Pound, and also cemented Tupac's legacy, while creating one of the defining sounds of the '90s the latter built the Aftermath empire, with Eminem, 50 Cent and Kendrick Lamar ranking among the world's great rap voices. It's followed the public, often ugly dissolutions of relationships with Eazy-E and Ruthless Records, then Suge Knight and his Death Row Records, and the answer is always the same. Dre's 1999 single "Still D.R.E." - whether the man born Andre Young was still able to deliver the caliber of music that made him a household name - has recurred often over the course of the hip-hop producer's career.
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"They want to know if he's still got it." Dre releases his first album in 16 years, Compton, on August 7.