Songoftheday 3/9/22 - Mad at me 'cause I can finally afford to provide my family with groceries, got a crib with a studio and it's all full of tracks...

 

 

"Forgot About Dre" - Dr. Dre featuring Eminem

from the album 2001 (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 12

 

Today's song comes from rapper/producer Dr. Dre (aka Andre Young), whose debut solo album after the dissolution of seminal rap group N.W.A., The Chronic in 1992, became one of the landmark sets of the west coast hip-hop genre. However, after the collapse of the Death Row record label, Dre went more behind the scenes for years, though he emerged in 1995 with a top ten pop/R&B hit with "Keep Their Heads Ringin'" from the movie Friday. The following year, Dre was featured on two massive #1 hits with "California Love" with the late 2Pac and "No Diggity" with the group Blackstreet. Dre started up his own label, Aftermath, and released a record featuring the artists on it, Dr. Dre Presents: The Aftermath, which included one new song of his, "Been There Done That", which went to #19 on Billboard magazine's R&B Airplay chart in 1996. The collection went to #6 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and sold over a million copies, reestablishing Dre's clout in the hip-hop world. A collaboration with LL Cool J, "Zoom", from the movie Bulworth, was a decent hit in the UK, hitting #15 across the pond.

Finally, after seven years, Dr. Dre emerged with a second solo studio album, 2001, at the close of 1999. The record had an array of featured artists, including old partners like Snoop Dogg, newcomers like Hittman, and the newly-hot Marshall "Eminem" Mathers, whose debut full-length album The Slim Shady LP Dre produced a few cuts on, including one he guested on himself, "Guilty Conscience", which went to #56 on the R&B Airplay chart in 1999. Another cut from Eminem's record, "My Name Is...", was also co-written and produced by Dre, and was Eminem's first taste of mainstream success, reaching the top-40 in the spring of 1999. 

The lead single from 2001, "Still D.R.E.", featured Snoop Dogg, but while it reached the top-40 on Billboard's R&B chart at #32, the track stalled down at #93 on the pop Hot 100, though garnering a Grammy nomination for Best Duo/Group Rap performance, losing to the Roots & Erykah Badu's "You Got Me". (It would eventually reach the top-40 there just this year in 2022 due to their appearance on the Super Bowl.) With Eminem's rising momentum, the second release would bring Dre back to the mainstream. "Forgot About D.R.E.", written by Dre, Eminem, and co-producer Melvin "Mel-Man" Bradford, was a retort to Suge Knight's Death Row remnants dissing his legacy in the rap world, throwing out lyrical punches while hyping his history. Eminem acts as his crazy sidekick, simply attacking with violent ferocity in the insane persona that his first few albums provided. Cribbing the opening of a No Doubt album track, Dre and Eminem found themselves back in the pop top-40...

"Forgot About Dre" became Dr. Dre's fifth top-40 crossover single as a lead artist in March of 2000. The song climbed to #14 on Billboard's R&B chart, and #3 on their Rhythmic Airplay list. Internationally, the single rose all the way to #7 on the British Singles Chart, and made the top-40 in the Netherlands (#16), Ireland (#20), New Zealand (#26), Sweden (#29), and Switzerland (#37). The 2001 album, released in November of 1999, spent four weeks at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and four weeks at #1 on the R&B Albums list, lasting over three years on the chart and selling over seven million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, Dre was actually competing against another cut from this album (which will be coming up) for Best Duo/Group Rap Performance, and this one took the prize (surprisingly not cancelling each other out). That other song will be back to the series.

(9/10)

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Here's Dre and Eminem on the Up In Smoke tour in 2000...

and lastly at a promo show for his Beats headphones in 2014...

Up tomorrow: Country singer cribs another pop song for a hit.