He threatened both men with physical violence and lawsuits, often at the same time. Suge Knight, who was clearly not bitter about losing his cash cows to rival labels, took out his anger on Dre and Snoop every chance he got. (I'm quite afraid of what Dre's wife considers to be horrific if she finds those topics fun to listen to, but whatever.) Andre quickly pulled his white lab coat and stethoscope out of his storage unit in Compton, and began recording what was tentatively called Chronic 2000, ostensibly a sequel to his breakthrough "solo" album The Chronic, with the help and encouragement of his two most successful apprentices, Snoop Dogg (who escaped from Death Row Records himself shortly after the Dre debacle) and Eminem. Dre claims that, late one night, his wife found him in a slightly depressed funk, wondering where his musical career was going to take him, and gave him the green light to start talking about murder, bitches, hos, and murdering bitches and hos again, all for the sake of entertainment. After leaving Death Row Records, a label which owed its very existence to violent and sexist rap music, he vowed to leave it all behind him and move on to other topics. The other event that happened was more of an attitude shift for the unlicensed Doctor. Impressed with the craziness he heard (Dre was listening to The Slim Shady EP, after all), he quickly signed the white boy from Detroit and helped him take over MTV, a reign of terror which still continues to this day, as two nights ago he somehow won an award at the VMA's for "We Made You", and both that song and video suck balls. Dre was flipping through some demo tapes and independently-released albums that somehow found their way into his collection, and came across an EP by an unknown artist named Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem. Then, two seemingly unrelated events occurred. Fans were satisfied by the track itself, but the compilation tanked, since the rest of it pretty much sucked (save for one other song, Group Therapy's "East Coast West Coast Killas", which featured Dre on the hook surrounded by KRS-One, B-Real, Nas, and RBX, who was the odd man out in this cry for hip hop solidarity), and Aftermath Records was damn near written off as yet another failed investment for Interscope. Dre the rapper: that was the mild MTV hit "Been There, Done That", in which the man who popularized G-Funk gangsta rap (note: I didn't say he created it) denounced his former sub-genre, choosing instead to focus on positive messages, living life to the fullest, and, oddly, ballroom dancing (at least, that's what I learned from the video). (None of whom would ever release their own album, but that's a story for another day.) Only one track was credited to Dr. Dre Presents The Aftermath, marketed as a sampler of all of the artists Dre had signed after decorating the new offices. However, what we ended up with is a crappy compilation album entitled Dr. Once this news hit the hip hop media, it was wholly expected that Dre's first release was going to fucking blow our collective minds, due to its inherent awesomeness and the fact that Death Row's output had declined in quality almost immediately following Dre's departure, a fact that had to help the man sleep more easily at night. Dre escaped the sinking ship that was better known as Death Row Records, he ended up on dry land at Interscope Records, where label head Jimmy Iovine rewarded Andre Young for his talent and hard work with a vanity label of his own, which he called Aftermath Records.
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