Now at the age of 49, I sit here on my comfortable sofa typing this memoir out. It has been a long way here. Now somebody would say that I sit here remembering the good old days, but it never has been that way for me. Since I was a child, I didn't have the peace of mind one would expect a child to have. Let's start from the beginning now though.
My real name is Andre Romelle Young, and I was born in Crompton in 1965. My middle name was derived from my dad's singing group, the Romelles. They married in 1964, but separated in 1968 and divorced in 1972. Soon, she married Curtis Crayon and started a real family. While growing up we were constantly moving from place to place, to house as mother always tried to make a home for her beloved sons. When my mother heard of her sons being bullied in the neighbourhood she would up and move to a new area within Compton. We would change schools and find it hard to settle down. Mom was also very conscious of us getting sucked into the vacuum of the new gang- life, but it was inevitable. This tough time during childhood is what influences my production.
But then I started to develop a newfound interest in music. I started to make music on turntables. I just knew when the music was right, as it connected with my heart and the community. The music just connected them to me, even though I did not have a widespread fan base at the time. Music was like an outlet of creativity for me. It allowed me to express what I and most other people from my community were going through.
By around the mid 1980’s I was nineteen years old and too old to stay at Fremont high where I wasn’t doing well at, but mom urged me to stay. I knew I should continue my education, so I enrolled in Chester Adult School in Compton. I even signed up at a radio broadcasting school, only to find out I already knew the ropes they were teaching me to climb. I moved out of home and in with my grandparents’ then my biological father, Theodore’s place until I was arrested on a drug charge. I moved back in with my mother and siblings. Andre stayed there for the following two years, completed his education at Chester and still a Cru member at Eve’s making over forty-nine cuts with DJ Yella which is where the big break started.
After small record shop owner, Steve Yano took my tape to the swap meet where crowds chanted for me to perform live, which boosted the sales. This made me the hottest DJ in town, and the Wreckin Cru’s most talented performer. Soon the single, “Surgery” would be my promotional track. It sold almost 50,000 copies.
From here everything was up. I found fame and a similar group of friends in the influential gangsta rap group N.W.A with Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella, which popularized the use of explicit lyrics in rap to detail the violence of street life.
We all had disturbed childhoods, which drove us to make our music. Everytime I remembered the bullying and violence from school, I worked harder and harder on my music. It also gave me this feeling when I knew I sounded right. When I’m sitting in the studio, a mix isn’t done till I feel it in my gut. It’s been the same way from the beginning, even when I was DJ’ing, if I heard a song that I wanted to play that I thought would be great in the club that night, I’d have to feel it in my gut. It’s a little bit hard to explain — I guess that’s the best way I can explain it. It’s just a way that it makes you feel, and we’ve had that experience because of being in the studio for so long and going through the same experiences you are rapping about.
This in turn increased awareness about the situation black people were going through. It almost turned into a fad, a symbol of going through struggle. I personally think that the representation of the troubled black lives in such a violent and profane way made the public take notice. They started to understand the feelings of black people and even the black people themselves started to think about their own situation. Today the violence and ‘gang-street’ life is not as bad as it was in the tough old days, which is a good thing. We, the black people even got a sound in the public sphere. We had our own identity, which secretly every good artist wants his community to have.
My real name is Andre Romelle Young, and I was born in Crompton in 1965. My middle name was derived from my dad's singing group, the Romelles. They married in 1964, but separated in 1968 and divorced in 1972. Soon, she married Curtis Crayon and started a real family. While growing up we were constantly moving from place to place, to house as mother always tried to make a home for her beloved sons. When my mother heard of her sons being bullied in the neighbourhood she would up and move to a new area within Compton. We would change schools and find it hard to settle down. Mom was also very conscious of us getting sucked into the vacuum of the new gang- life, but it was inevitable. This tough time during childhood is what influences my production.
But then I started to develop a newfound interest in music. I started to make music on turntables. I just knew when the music was right, as it connected with my heart and the community. The music just connected them to me, even though I did not have a widespread fan base at the time. Music was like an outlet of creativity for me. It allowed me to express what I and most other people from my community were going through.
By around the mid 1980’s I was nineteen years old and too old to stay at Fremont high where I wasn’t doing well at, but mom urged me to stay. I knew I should continue my education, so I enrolled in Chester Adult School in Compton. I even signed up at a radio broadcasting school, only to find out I already knew the ropes they were teaching me to climb. I moved out of home and in with my grandparents’ then my biological father, Theodore’s place until I was arrested on a drug charge. I moved back in with my mother and siblings. Andre stayed there for the following two years, completed his education at Chester and still a Cru member at Eve’s making over forty-nine cuts with DJ Yella which is where the big break started.
After small record shop owner, Steve Yano took my tape to the swap meet where crowds chanted for me to perform live, which boosted the sales. This made me the hottest DJ in town, and the Wreckin Cru’s most talented performer. Soon the single, “Surgery” would be my promotional track. It sold almost 50,000 copies.
From here everything was up. I found fame and a similar group of friends in the influential gangsta rap group N.W.A with Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella, which popularized the use of explicit lyrics in rap to detail the violence of street life.
We all had disturbed childhoods, which drove us to make our music. Everytime I remembered the bullying and violence from school, I worked harder and harder on my music. It also gave me this feeling when I knew I sounded right. When I’m sitting in the studio, a mix isn’t done till I feel it in my gut. It’s been the same way from the beginning, even when I was DJ’ing, if I heard a song that I wanted to play that I thought would be great in the club that night, I’d have to feel it in my gut. It’s a little bit hard to explain — I guess that’s the best way I can explain it. It’s just a way that it makes you feel, and we’ve had that experience because of being in the studio for so long and going through the same experiences you are rapping about.
This in turn increased awareness about the situation black people were going through. It almost turned into a fad, a symbol of going through struggle. I personally think that the representation of the troubled black lives in such a violent and profane way made the public take notice. They started to understand the feelings of black people and even the black people themselves started to think about their own situation. Today the violence and ‘gang-street’ life is not as bad as it was in the tough old days, which is a good thing. We, the black people even got a sound in the public sphere. We had our own identity, which secretly every good artist wants his community to have.
-Dr. Dre
