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He wants to tell you, for instance, about the deal he got on his mansion: “Got a palace in the Hills overlooking the sea / It’s worth eight, but I only paid 5.3.” The video is a lavish affair, full of palm trees and corner offices and helicopters. Taking a catchphrase from a Mountain Dew extreme-sports commercial, Dre grumpily huffs about the peers who “talk that hard bullshit cuz that’s all they worth.” Dre has other things on his mind. “Been There, Done That,” the single that Dre released in 1996, is a fascinating little time capsule in the career of an American music icon. And when Dre broke away from the genuinely dangerous associates at Death Row Records, the label he’d co-founded, he attempted to leave all that behind him. In real life, Dre could be a violent person - he’s got a well-documented history of hurting women - but he was never anything like the dead-eyed murderer he sometimes portrayed.
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In 1988, Dre had rapped the words, “I don’t smoke weed or cess.” Four years later, he released The Chronic, the album that made his weed-leaf icon as omnipresent as the Yankees’ logo or the outline of Mickey Mouse’s head. When the lights first went down for the headliners, after a short and violent movie, Dre and Snoop came strutting out the door of an onstage liquor store while the dramatic fanfare of “The Next Episode” boomed from arena speakers. At another, a giant skull descended from the rafters, shooting lasers from its eyes, laughing, telling the crowd to roll the weed up. A low-rider bounced across the stage at one point. Others were there to assist with Dre’s own set: Nate Dogg, Kurupt, old partner Snoop Dogg.īut it wasn’t just the cast that made the Up In Smoke tour special. Some of them were opening acts: Warren G, Eminem, Ice Cube. Dre brought along his most famous collaborators, old and new. In the late summer of 2000, Dre embarked on the Up In Smoke Tour, the most elaborate traveling rap show that had ever been mounted. But nine months later, the tour that Dre mounted wasn’t that different. He was thinking out loud, imagining how his own greatest hits could be adapted into a big-money stage play: “For instance, an undercover cop gets killed on stage, and then me and Snoop would come out and do ‘Deep Cover.’ It could work.” On the eve of the release of his sophomore album 2001, Dre was talking to the New York Times’ Jon Pareles. Dre was thinking about putting on a musical.