Dr. Dre’s Detox is hip hop’s Atlantis, a genius at his highest levels crafting a perfect, utopian work of art that most likely doesn’t exist. Most likely, which is to say there’s a chance that the final copy of Detox is sitting in a vault somewhere in California. But it most likely doesn’t exist.
Every historical era needs its myths and mysteries. But these myths are harder to find now with social media documenting everything (which is why the plane’s disappearance took on a new level of intrigue, but we seem to have figured that out too). Off the top of my head, here are some of the greatest myths of the 20th century:
– DB Cooper
– the Loch Ness Monster
– Bigfoot
– Dr. Dre’s Detox
And then it just kind of stops. We’re jaded by the phrase “it was photoshopped” to believe in things that are most likely not true anymore. I declare the rumored existence of Detox the last great myth, in that case. Detox has the longevity too. The Detox era started in 2000, and lasted until…well, it’s still going.
The idea of Detox pops up every now and then, like a backdoor cut in the Princeton offense that leads to a dunk and reminds you “Oh yeah, I should keep an eye out for that”. The story begins in 2001, when Scott Storch called it the “most advanced rap album musically and lyrically we’ll probably ever have a chance to listen to” (a riddle: if Dr. Dre creates something that is “advanced” in 2001, have we caught up by 2014?). Dre pushed the release date back to 2005, and gave a teaser on Game’s “Higher” (as the annotated note says, “Over a decade later, still no Detox). Then, Snoop said that album was done – in 2008. The closest Dre came to releasing Detox was through the two singles Kush and I Need a Doctor – back in 2010 and February 2011. And like Keyser Soze, that was the last we ever heard.
In the Meantime…
We’ve been waiting for Detox really since 1999 with the release of Chronic 2001. Needless to say, life changed in the following 15 years. 2001 sold 516,000 copies in its first week and sold over 7.5 million copies. Last year’s highest selling album, Justin Timberlake’s 20/20, sold 2.87 million copies, only the second time that a highest selling album of the year sold less than 3 million albums. And through all the tweets, Instagrams, Napsters, music downloads, and waiting for Detox, Dr. Dre became hip hop’s first almost billionaire with Apple purchasing Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion.
Think about that. While we waited for an album that probably never existed, Dr. Dre had time to build a billion dollar company from scratch. That’s the thing with Bigfoot – we can study those pictures for hours a day and debate theories on message boards all day, but life still goes on. This infographic puts the rise of Beats in perspective, from every commercial and partnership, while we waited, and waited, and waited.
We pictured it too. Detox leak night would go down as a top 5 night on Twitter, and you know how it’d go too – you’d have one section claiming “great album ever” and another claiming “we waited 15 years for this garbage”, all without listening to one song. Then there’s the possibility that on a random summer day, Dre leaks the album on Instagram with no warning. How Dre releases Detox might be the new Detox.
But that’s the point – Detox getting released in 2001 isn’t the same as Detox getting released in 2014. Netflix is the new music. Instagram is the new music. High art is the new music. A headphone is the new music. Or, as is the case with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, Apple hardware is the new music. So maybe the spirit, creativity, and cultural impact of Detox won’t be in the form of an album, but in the form of Dre’s involvement in hardware, software, and apps. In that sense, Detox was with us all this time.
