As rumors continue to build around a possible release of Dr. Dre’s nearly mythical Detox album, the famed producer was seen on Instagram hitting the studio with Donda songwriter Fat Money, suggesting the long-awaited project might finally see the light of day.
“I love the fuck out my job,” Fat Money wrote on his Monday (April 11) Instagram post alongside a few photos of Dre and himself in the studio.
He had previously posted a few other pictures of himself with the Doctor on Thursday (April 7), writing, “The Young Man w/ the Dr… Don’t nobody move” in the caption.
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The latest studio session comes after Dr. Dre was spotted hitting the studio with his old “Still D.R.E.” partner Snoop Dogg earlier this month. In photos captured of the moment, fans noticed a densely covered whiteboard in the background. Part of the whiteboard was labeled “Detox” with an apparent tracklist below it. Twitter user @ranoutofmeds first noticed the outline. “If you look in the background of the new pictures @SnoopDogg minted w/ him and Dre you can see the tracklist for Detox!!” he wrote.
Snoop had shared another promising photo on March 31 that had been snapped from the same studio session. “The Chronic is bac Home,” Snoop wrote, further adding to speculation that new music was coming.
Dr. Dre’s third studio album Detox was announced in 2002, but the elusive LP never came to be. Over the years, Dre would provide updates and delays to the album while loosely confirming its existence. After a while, Dre went radio silent on the project. The status of the album was finally revealed in 2015, when the rapper and producer explained on his Beats 1 radio show The Pharmacy he’d canned Detox because it simply wasn’t up to his standards.
“This is something you’re not gonna hear many artists say: the reason that Detox didn’t come out was because I didn’t like it,” Dre said. “It wasn’t good. The record, it just wasn’t good… I mean seriously, I worked my ass off on it, but I didn’t think I did a good enough job. I couldn’t do that to my fans, I couldn’t do that to myself, to be honest.”
He then announced the follow-up to 1999’s 2001 would officially be called Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr. Dre, meant for the film of the same name. The project was released on August 7, 2015 and featured appearances from Kendrick Lamar, BJ The Chicago Kid, Anderson .Paak, Snoop Dogg and others.
YOOOOOO! If you look in the background of the new pictures @SnoopDogg minted w/ him and Dre you can see the tracklist for Detox!! pic.twitter.com/QSpmBT8Pvi
— God Flow (@ranoutofmeds) April 1, 2022