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Dr. Dre

American rapper, record producer, record executive, and actor

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ6078 ↗
Source-derived summary

Andre Romell Young (born February 18, 1965), known professionally as Dr. Dre (or simply Dre; ), is an American rapper, record producer, record executive, and actor. He is the founder and CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics, and co-founder of Death Row Records. Dre began his career as a member of the World Class Wreckin' Cru in 1984, and later found fame with the gangsta rap group N.W.A, which he formed in 1987 with Eazy-E, Ice Cube and Arabian Prince. The group popularized explicit lyrics in hip-hop to detail the violence of street life. N.W.A's debut album Straight Outta Compton (1989) was one of the most successful albums in the West Coast hip-hop scene, and is often credited for the rise in popularity of gangsta rap. During the early 1990s, Dre was credited as a key figure in the crafting and popularization of West Coast G-funk, a subgenre of hip-hop characterized by a synthesizer foundation and slow, heavy production.

Shortly after the release of their second album Niggaz4life (1991), N.W.A disbanded and Dr. Dre began his career as a solo artist. Released as Death Row's first major project, Dr.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Dr. Dre” is american rapper, record producer, record executive, and actor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through American, rapper and producer, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1965, 1984, 1987, 1989—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-02-18. For this dossier, American, rapper and producer is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american rapper, record producer, record executive, and actor” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6078. VIAF identifies the subject as 32190655. The Library of Congress control number is n96019473. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1984, 1987 and 1989.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Dr. Dre”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Dr. Dre primary sources, Dr. Dre archive and American research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Dr. Dre”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Dr. Dre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.