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Andre Romell Young, known professionally as Dr. Dre, is an American rapper, record producer, record executive, and actor. He is the founder and CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics, and co-founder of Death Row Records.
Dr. Dre born February 18, 1965, Los Angeles, California, U.S. is an American rapper, hip-hop producer, and entrepreneur who helped popularize the gangsta rap subgenre.
Born to teenaged parents who aspired to singing careers, André Young took the stage name Dr. Dre in the early 1980s. He performed as a hip-hop deejay and as part of the group World Class Wreckin’ Cru at clubs and parties in Los Angeles’ south-central district. In 1986 he founded N.W.A Niggaz Wit Attitudes with fellow rappers Eazy-E and Ice Cube. The group’s second album, Straight Outta Compton 1988, was a breakthrough for the nascent gangsta rap movement, featuring explicit descriptions and often glorifications of street violence and drug dealing.
While Dre appeared prominently as a rapper in N.W.A, his most-lauded role was as a producer, crafting ambitiously noisy, multilayered sonic collages to back the group’s inflammatory lyrics.
Dre left N.W.A in 1992 and cofounded Death Row Records with Marion “Suge” Knight. That year his solo debut, The Chronic, introduced the “G-funk” production style, characterized by plodding tempos, synthesizer washes, and copious musical sampling of 1970s funk records, especially those by Parliament-Funkadelic. The album also produced Dr. Dre’s first Grammy Award, for “Let Me Ride,” which was released as a single after the album’s release and took home best rap solo performance at the 1994 ceremony. The Chronic’s multiplatinum success helped make this sound dominant in mainstream hip-hop in the mid-1990s. In 1996 Dre left Death Row to form Aftermath Records. Three years later he released a second hit solo album, 2001 1999, which produced the Grammy-winning single “Forgot About Dre,” among other hits.