Dr. Dre Says He Made 20 to 40 Songs For ‘Detox’

After years of grinding away in the dark, last month Dr. Dre unexpectedly announced that a new album was on the way. Compton: A Soundtrack, a solo record loosely inspired by the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton (which drops this Friday, Aug. 14), is Dre's first LP in 16 years and features promising up-and-comers like King Mez and Anderson .Paak alongside old favorites like Snoop Dogg and Eminem. Another longtime collaborator, Ice Cube, joins Dre on the next cover of Rolling Stone. In the story, which has yet to drop in full, Dre explains that the long-awaited follow-up to 1999's 2001, an album long rumored to be called Detox, simply didn't live up to his standards. "I had between 20 and 40 songs for Detox," Dre said, "and I just couldn't feel it. Usually I can hear the sequence of an album as I'm going, but I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't feeling it in my gut. So I really thought I was done being an artist."

That echoes what DJ Premier--who produced the .Paak-featuring "Animals"--told Billboard about the Doc's decision making. "He just said it's not up to his standards of quality," Preemo explained. :He said it is officially over. But when they hear [Compton], they'll understand why." Elsewhere in the Rolling Stone piece, Dre addresses allegations of domestic abuse that have dogged him throughout his career: "I made some fucking horrible mistakes in my life. I was young, fucking stupid. I would say all the allegations aren't true – some of them are. Those are some of the things that I would like to take back. It was really fucked up. But I paid for those mistakes, and there's no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again."