Does He Still Have the Rx?

It’s just past noon as rapper-producer Dr. Dre walks down a spiral staircase in his $4.9-million hillside San Fernando Valley home. The staircase is so grand it would be ideal for silent-film star Norma Desmond’s fantasized show-biz reentry scene in a remake of “Sunset Boulevard.”

But then Dre--whose real name is Andre Young--is making his own real-life reentry these days. Next month’s “Dr. Dre 2001” will be the first album in seven years from the man who has twice revolutionized rap music.

He did it once by helping popularize the infamous gangsta rap style in the late ‘80s as a member of N.W.A, and he did it again with “The Chronic,” his 1992 album whose seductive R&B; and funk textures made hard-core rap accessible to mainstream radio.

Calling it one of the 10 most important albums of the ‘90s, Spin magazine said the record “gave African American resentment and ghetto nihilism a seductive, cinematic flow.” Spin also tabbed Dre’s “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” that same year the best single of the decade.

The question now is whether Dre can rejuvenate the commercially booming but creatively stagnant rap scene a third time.

Not everyone is convinced he can with the new album, which is due in stores Nov. 16. Some skeptics feel Dre stayed on the sidelines too long in the rapidly changing world of rap, and that he may now be viewed as passe by the music’s young constituents.

Dre, a muscular, 6-foot-2 man with a quick sense of humor that is often missed by those turned off by the often crude, misogynistic nature of his lyrics, smiles when the doubts are mentioned.

“Yes, everything is riding on this album,” he says. “If it doesn’t sell, the voice you hear coming out of that little box at McDonald’s may be mine. . . . Do you want any French fries with your order?”

Dre laughs, but he’s not joking when he says there is a lot riding on this album. That’s why he recorded almost 100 tracks before he had the 22 tracks he wanted for the album. The result is a powerful work that not only greatly extends the sonic lure of “The Chronic,” but also introduces a more thoughtful and personal side of a man who made millions by simply inviting us to party.

But music isn’t the only reason it took seven years between albums.

Dre, 34, has also been concerned with getting his personal life in order. In the early ‘90s, he sometimes seemed to be spending as much time in court and jail on assault charges as in the recording studio.

The troubling series of violent incidents ranged from Dre’s slamming a female TV talk-show host into a wall at a Hollywood club in 1991 to hitting a New Orleans policeman in a hotel lobby brawl in 1992 to breaking another Los Angeles rap producer’s jaw the same year. He was eventually sentenced to six months in a Pasadena jail in 1995 for violating the probation he had received after the attack on the producer.

“I was out of control,” Dre says. “I was wildin’ out, partying, women. . . . I think the business and all the fame and fortune just sucked me in, and I had to step back and see I was ruining everything that I had worked so hard at building.”

Dre’s story sounds perfect for “Behind the Music,” the VH1 documentary series that loves to retrace stories of success, downfall and, hopefully, redemption. And sure enough, the series is doing an episode on the rapper.

“One thing I’ve learned, from experience and from talking to people like Quincy Jones who have been in the business a long time, is that once you get successful, everyone wants to be your friend,” Dre says. “But a lot of those people don’t have your best interests in mind.

“I finally had to sit down at one point a few years ago and try to picture myself 10 years from now and imagine which people I wanted around me, which people were really a positive force in my life. That list turned out to be very small. But the list of people around me at the time could have filled the Forum.”

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Dre--along with his wife, Nicole, and their two young sons--has just moved into this storybook 30,000-square-foot estate in a gated Woodland Hills community. Packing boxes are still scattered around, but there are already signs of a home. Toys are spread through the three-story house’s main floor, and there’s a tiny basketball backboard set up by the pool.

“I love my lifestyle and to continue living this lifestyle, I have to continue selling records and being successful,” he says.

The rapper doesn’t usually begin his workday until around noon, but he’s usually up by 7 a.m. Recently, he’s been spending a couple of hours most mornings at the gym, trying to work off some of the midriff bulge he acquired during the months he holed up 10 or more hours a day in the studio working on the album. But he also uses the mornings as family time.

The elementary school bus has already picked up the couple’s older son, but their preschooler is home. Nicole, an interior decorator, is trying to keep the youngster occupied in the house, but he breaks away and makes mad dashes to his father.

Each time, Dre takes him in his arms and hugs him before continuing the interview.

This disarming family scene isn’t what most people associate with the gangsta rap world.

Jimmy Iovine, the co-founder of Interscope Records whose credits as a producer include hit albums with Tom Petty, Patti Smith and Stevie

Nicks, is a big admirer of Dre’s production work.

“He’s done in rap music what Kurt Cobain did in rock music. . . . He’s changed the culture with his music,” says Iovine, whose company distributes Aftermath’s records. “He’s up there with guys like that.”

But Iovine is equally impressed with how Dre has taken charge of his personal life.

“The hardest thing in the world for anybody as driven and talented as Dre is to be successful both personally and professionally,” Iovine says. “That’s what he’s striving for, and I believe he’s succeeding. He’s striking that balance. I have an enormous amount of respect for him.”

Before awarding Dre any “family man of the year” awards, however, you’d better listen to his music. While Dre has apparently cleaned up his personal life, he hasn’t cleaned up his lyrics. Almost every track on the new album contains references to hard-core rap staples such as “bitches” and “ho’s.”

“I understand why some people object to the language, but they should realize I’m not talking about all women in those songs,” he says. “My mom’s not a bitch. Neither is my wife or most women I meet. Everyone knows who a bitch is. Even women use the word. A bitch is someone with a stuck-up attitude or someone who is out to trick you or take advantage of you. The same with ‘ho.’ It’s someone who sells her body for money.”

At the same time, Dre acknowledges that he began to feel self-conscious using the words after he was married in 1996. He even tried to soften the tone of his music on two albums he put out with other artists on his record label.

But he wasn’t satisfied with the results, and neither was the public. Sales were disappointing.

Rap critics began suggesting that Dre had lost his bite. The producer finally sat down with his wife and talked about his music, and he says he got her blessing to go back to the hard-core sound.

“I love hard-core hip-hop,” he says. “That’s what I’m good at. You’ve got your Richard Pryors in the world and your Bill Cosbys. My mother let me listen to Richard Pryor when I was a kid. You know what I’m saying? And it was funny to me . . . the shock value and all.

“It’s just like . . . ‘Pulp Fiction.’ I don’t understand how people can love that movie and then say my records are bad. My records are straight-up dark comedy.”

*

“Do you want it spicy, medium or mild?” Dre asks, sitting in a West Hollywood recording studio a few days before the interview at his house. He’s eager to play a few tracks from the new album, and he wants to know your volume preference.

This is his lucky studio, the room where he has gone over the final touches on everything from N.W.A’s debut “Straight Outta Compton” to Eminem’s “The Slim Shady LP,” the most talked-about rap album so far this year and the most successful release yet on Dre’s label, Aftermath. The collection, which has sold 2.5 million copies, is another hard-core exercise filled with dark, sometimes shocking humor.

Dre begins playing “Still D-R-E,” the first single from his new album. The song is designed to reestablish Dre’s hard-core credentials, and it’s something you’re likely to hear booming out of car stereos most of the fall. The track is blessed with the same kind of strong, distinctive groove as earlier Dre gems such as “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” and “California Love.”

“This record . . . takes what I did with N.W.A and ‘The Chronic’ and makes it sound futuristic, you know what I’m saying?” Dre says. “We’re going after the same audience, but we want to give them something fresh . . . an excitement that is missing from the hip-hop scene right now. To me, the scene is pretty much dead [artistically]. There’s not a lot that you hear it and you go, ‘I’ve got to have this.’ ”

As he listens to the tracks, he moves back and forth in his chair, emulating the rolling motion of the lowrider cars he features in many of his videos. Dre also watches for reactions as the music booms through the overhead speakers.

“I’ve always been into deejaying, . . . playing music for people,” he says later. “Back when I was like 3 and 4 years old, I would play records for my mother’s card parties. I’d put a record on and people would scream out or get up and dance. I just loved stirring people up.”

Dre, who was born in Compton and attended Centennial High School, received a great R&B; and funk education as a child from his mother, a divorced single parent who raised Dre and two other children and had an extensive record collection.

“I think music was my mom’s release from the pressures of working two jobs and all,” he says. “When she got home at night, the stereo came on even before the lights.”

It was easy to get into trouble in Dre’s neighborhood, but music and sports kept him away from gangs.

By the time Dre was in his teens, his mother had remarried and he had three stepsisters and a stepbrother--who is now rapper Warren G. During high school, Dre played records at parties and in clubs, specializing in the funk and R&B; sounds of such ‘70s artists as George Clinton, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield and Barry White.

But hip-hop soon became his first love. He adopted his stage name (a play on “Dr. J,” the nickname of one of his basketball heroes, Julius Erving) and eventually put out a record, “Dr. Dre’s Surgery,” on his own label. It sold about 50,000 copies. He didn’t make much money on it, but it made him a star on the local rap scene.

*

Dre eventually joined with other local rap hotshots and formed N.W.A.

Though he would later leave the group in a dispute over management and finances, he looks back on those days fondly. He even hopes to work again soon with N.W.A alum Ice Cube.

“People today talk about how revolutionary N.W.A was and how we had all these big ideas about how to change rap,” Dre says. “But we were just making it for the neighborhood. . . . We were making stuff we knew our friends would like.”

You get a sense just how instinctive N.W.A was when you hear the story behind “F--- Tha Police.” That’s the track on “Straight Outta Compton” that was attacked by an FBI official as encouraging violence against law enforcement officers. The song was defended by critics as an illuminating expression of ghetto rage against police mistreatment of minorities.

In fact, Dre says, the anger in the song wasn’t any purposeful social statement. It was triggered by a pretty outrageous prank.

“[N.W.A member] Eazy-E and I were driving through Torrance, and Eazy was leaning out the window shooting people at bus stops with these paint guns that you can buy,” Dre says. “We were laughing our asses off watching the people on the benches freak out because the paint balls were red.

“Well, not too much later we found ourselves down on the freeway with guns to our heads and the police were being like real ass-----. We left that experience and went into the studio and made that song--the same day.”

And how did they feel when the FBI attacked the song?

“We felt it was going to help sales,” he says. “After that happened, we went, ‘Yo, what else can we say to piss people off?’ ”

It was during the N.W.A days that Dre began getting caught up in the partying--and the violence. But his career and personal life wouldn’t reach the crisis stage until he got to Death Row Records.

*

The sky seemed the limit in 1992 when Dre co-founded Death Row Records with former music publisher Marion “Suge” Knight, with the dream of making the fledgling label into the Motown of rap.

With Dre spearheading the music and Knight handling the business, the label almost succeeded. With a roster that also included the late Tupac Shakur and Snoop Doggy Dogg, Death Row not only became the hottest label in rap, but it also brought credibility to the West Coast rap scene.

But the dream was soon shattered.

As part of his campaign to straighten out his personal life, Dre left Death Row in early 1996 to form his Aftermath label.

Death Row suffered another major blow a few months later when Shakur was shot dead in Las Vegas. And the curtain pretty much fell for the label the following year when Knight was sentenced to prison for nine years for probation violation.

Dre says the Death Row experience is behind him and he doesn’t want to talk about it, except to say, “It stopped being fun. There were fights in the studio, engineers getting beat up, . . . just senseless things going on. It got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. Still, it was difficult to leave. It was like a divorce.”

In interviews at the time, Dre spoke about changing his ways, but many in the rap world wondered if he could follow through.

“No, I don’t even miss going out to parties or clubs and stuff,” he says when asked about the old lifestyle. “Whenever we want to have a function, we do our own thing, real private with just people that we know. We still turn the music up, have drinks and party, but it’s a lot more comfortable.”

Some rap observers would argue that Dre has already changed the face of rap a third time--by launching the first critically acclaimed blockbuster album by a white rapper.

With the cornball stylings of Vanilla Ice in the early ‘90s, the credibility level of white rappers evaporated.

“The funny thing is, I didn’t know Eminem was white when Jimmy [Iovine] sent me his tape,” Dre says during the interview at his house. “I just loved the way he rapped.

“Jimmy calls me the next day and he says, ‘Dre, you know this guy has blue eyes.’ I thought that’s fine. I wasn’t worried that people would react against him because he’s white. The hardest thugs I know think this white boy’s tight.”

If Eminem’s success is likely to open the door for more white rappers, it may also, ironically, serve as a calling card to young rap audiences for Dre. Eminem is a guest on two tracks on the new collection.

Eminem, 25, says Dre’s contributions--he produced three of the tracks on “Slim Shady”--were essential to the success of his album.

“Trying to rap over a Dre beat for the first time did something for me,” Eminem says in a separate interview. “Dre showed me how to do things with my voice that I didn’t know I could do. . . . The way to deliver rhymes and [expletive]. I’d do something I thought was pretty good, and he’d say, ‘I think you can do it better.’ So we did it again and again, and he was right.”

Dre also has another vocal ally on “Dr. Dre 2001”: Snoop Dogg, who is a guest on four tracks. The album, co-produced by Mel-Man, also features guest appearances by several other rappers, including Kurupt, Nate Dogg and Hittman.

Mainly, however, Dre delivers the goods himself.

*

Dre’s strength has always been in his production, the way he can put irresistible beats underneath his raps, giving the music a glorious groove comparable to those of the great Motown and Stax hits of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Dre’s own rapping, both in delivery and content, has lagged behind such contemporaries as Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Ice Cube. That’s why he has used so many guest rappers on his albums over the years. But Dre makes impressive strides as a rapper on the new album, and he opens up emotionally in key tracks.

While most of the album is relentlessly hard-core, the final tune, titled “The Message” and which he wrote with Royce the 5’-9”, is a poignant song in the tradition of Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” and Shakur’s “Dear Mama.” It’s a reflection on the death of his younger brother, Tyree, whose neck was broken in a fight in 1998.

Dre says he has been wanting to put a song like “The Message” on his albums for years, but never felt comfortable doing it until now.

“What happened is some guys were rolling in a car in the Crenshaw area and my brother was coming across the street with friends and the car almost hit him,” he says of his brother’s death. “There were some words back and forth and the fight started. . . . It was just one of those things--the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Dre pauses.

“The truth is I had some close calls myself over the years. I got shot in the legs once in 1992 just because I was in the wrong place. That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, is that you got to do everything you can to avoid the wrong places.”

The conversation returns to VH1’s “Behind the Music” because he’s due to tape the show later in the day.

“You know, I don’t see too many happy stories on that show. . . . But maybe mine will be different.”

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Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached by e-mail at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.