Dr. Dre’s The Chronic Is Back On Streaming Services For Its 30th Anniversary
Dr. Dre’s 1992 solo debut The Chronic is arguably the most important rap album in history — the record that turned hardcore rap into blockbuster entertainment, showed the uncompromising street music could sell in numbers that nobody had ever predicted, and introduced a vast cast of characters, the young Snoop Doggy Dogg chief among them. Last year, however, The Chronic vanished from streaming services. This happened around the same time that Snoop Dogg announced that he had bought Death Row Records and that he had vague, perplexing plans to turn it into an NFT label. Today, The Chronic is streaming once again.
Shortly after Snoop Dogg bought Death Row Records, Billboard reported that The Chronic, along with other Death Row classics like Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle and Tha Dogg Pound’s Dogg Food, were no longer streaming. In a Tidal interview last year, Snoop claimed ownership of all of those records. Dr. Dre’s attorney Howard King disputed that claim: “Dr. Dre owns 100% of The Chronic.” Nobody ever confirmed why the album had been removed from streaming, but it’s back now.
The Chronic returns to streaming services today, and this is supposedly a celebration for the album’s 30th anniversary, which actually happened back in December. (If you’re a subscriber, you can read Stereogum’s 20th-anniversary piece on the album here.) In a statement, Dr. Dre says, “I am thrilled to bring The Chronic home to its original distribution partner, Interscope Records. Working alongside my longtime colleagues, Steve Berman and John Janick, to re-release the album and make it available to fans all over the world is a full circle moment for me.”
Stream The Chronic below.
Interscope has also reissued The Chronic on vinyl, CD, and cassette, and there’s a new line of Chronic merch out, too. All of that is available here. Doggystyle and Dogg Food are still not on streaming services.