THE DR.'S ALWAYS IN - Studio time. It's an obsession for Dr. Dre, producer to Eminem, 50 Cent and others. And he's not about to rush his final solo CD.
"WE go until it happens," rap producer Dr. Dre says about all the time he spends in the recording studio searching for hits, once as long as 79 hours in a single stretch. "When the ideas are coming," says the man who is one of the half-dozen most influential producers of the modern pop era, "I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time."
Some hip-hop fans, however, must be wondering if this particular train isn't off the track. Dre (real name: Andre Young) has been working on his third solo album, "Detox," for nearly eight years, a time frame that invites uncomfortable comparison with such earlier pop music train wrecks as Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and Axl Rose. All three were fabulously successful artists who found it so hard to live up to their own expectations that they each ran into creative paralysis.
But there are differences between Dre and the others, he and those close to him say. The 42-year-old Compton native hasn't just been working on his own album all these years.
As a producer and head of Aftermath Entertainment, Dre has also contributed to albums by Eminem, 50 Cent, the Game and others. Plus, he has "mixed" tracks -- fine-tuning the musical dynamics -- for more than a dozen other artists, including Gwen Stefani, Eve and Mary J. Blige.
Dre will now devote two months to working on Eminem's new album. "We'll be trying to get his thing done and work on a few things on my own project," Dre says.
It's an exhausting pace and it's possible only because of what Dre calls his obsession with the studio.
To achieve his level of success -- Dre has put his seductive hip-hop stamp on albums that have taken in more than $1 billion worldwide -- you obviously need musical talent.
"Dre is 'the Natural,' " says Interscope Records chief Jimmy Iovine. "Lots of producers have hits, but he does far more than that. He's a creator who has moved popular culture three times . . . with gangsta rap, G-funk and Eminem."
Yet the more you talk to Dre, the more you realize that another key element has been a mental toughness that enabled him to walk away from fast-lane excesses and a runaway ego.
Dre's greatest gift, in fact, may be the strong will that has helped him to recognize the most important things in his life -- the recording studio, his family and, most recently, weight training -- and strip away everything that doesn't serve those priorities.
