Perhaps for Dr Dre, premiering a highly anticipated album on a shiny new music service didn’t feel quite special enough. As well as streaming new album Compton on Apple Music on Thursday, the rapper and entrepreneur outlined his plans to donate royalties gained from the release to help fund a performing arts facility in the California city.
“I feel it’s the right thing to do and I hope everybody appreciates the work I put into this album,” Dre said, speaking with Zane Lowe on the DJ’s Beats 1 radio show on Thursday.
.@DrDre will donate his artist royalties from the sale of #Compton to help fund a new performing arts facility in Compton, CA. Out tonight!
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) August 6, 2015
Dre said he would be working with Compton mayor Aja Brown to implement the fundraising plan. “We’ve reached out to Aja Brown quite a few times in the last month or two,” he said. “I’ve been really trying to do something special for Compton and just couldn’t quite figure out what it was. She actually had this idea and she was already in the process of working on it. I said, ‘Boom, this is what we should do.’”
After Dre’s appearance on Lowe’s show, Compton – his first solo studio album in 16 years – was played on a loop for three hours on Apple Music. The stream started at 2am BST (6pm PDT/9pm EDT), and ended with another Lowe show dedicated to its release, at 5am BST (9pm PDT/12am EDT).
Last Saturday, Dre confirmed – during his own Beats 1 radio program – that he had scrapped long-awaited album Detox, and that Compton was due to be his “grand finale”. Compton is largely inspired by forthcoming NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, which documents the rise of Eazy-E, Dre and Ice Cube’s rap trio in the 1980s and 1990s.
