Dr. Dre‘s Aftermath Records is a widely-recognized name thanks to the producer’s solo success following his time with N.W.A. — but the label was almost called something different.
In an interview with the Murder Master Music Show published on Sunday (June 11), veteran Compton MC King T recalled his brief time on the label as their first-ever act and revealed it had a whole different name then.
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“I’m like one of the first artists he wanted to sign,” King T said of Dr. Dre. “We just ended up in the studio up at Record One, they just put on a beat and I just knocked it out. It was so easy and I was just happy to be there. The rhymes just came, [‘Str-8 Gone’] was one of the best songs I’ve done in my career. I was just happy to be working with Dr. Dre.”
He continued: “They didn’t even have the name of the label Aftermath when I did that song, they was calling it something else. I was there before the name Aftermath even came about. I think it was something like Black Market or something, I can’t remember.
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“You know what it was something like Black Market, but somebody else had it, they were trying to sell it to Dre for some buku money. They ended up putting the ‘Str-8 Gone’ song on the first compilation they ended up putting out on Aftermath, but it was a great song.”
You can listen to the conversation below:
In other Dr. Dre news, Snoop Dogg recently confirmed that his long-awaited joint album with the producer, Missionary, is finally on the way.
Taking to Instagram on Thursday (June 9), Snoop shared a photo of Dre in the studio, captioning it: “Coming soon.”
The pair were first spotted reuniting in the studio in March last year, with Snoop announcing on Instagram: “The Chronic is bac home.” Snoop then confirmed during a red carpet appearance last summer for ET that the two of them were in fact “cooking up” something new.
That announcement was followed by an appearance on Stephen A. Smith’s Know Mercy podcast last October, where Snoop said they were in fact working on a new project.
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“I’ma tell you this, you’re the first one to hear this: me and Dr. Dre have been working on an album for the past two months,” Snoop said at the time. “And it’ll be done in November. It’s produced by Dr. Dre, it’s our 30th anniversary to Doggystyle. And the name of the album is Missionary.”
