For a guy who is a massive figure in hip-hop, Dr. Dre is somewhat unlikely of a star. He doesn’t love touring, he doesn’t love doing interviews and on records, he doesn’t hog the spotlight. In fact, there are very few Dr. Dre songs that are legit solo tracks: he almost always has a collaborator working with him. 

He got his start as a member of a group, the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, and more famously, was a member of N.W.A., along with Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and the late Eazy-E. Cube, Ren, and Eazy were the main MCs with Dre mostly staying in the background, although he did take the mic on “Express Yourself.” After Ice Cube left, Dre got on the mic a bit more often, proving himself to be a solid MC as well as one of the best DJ/producers in the game. 

After the implosion of N.W.A., Dr. Dre took off on his own, hooking up with Suge Knight and starting Death Row Records. Dre first introduced himself as a solo artist on the track “Deep Cover” from the soundtrack of the 1992 film of the same name. That song also introduced a new MC named Snoop Doggy Dogg. The song wasn’t a massive hit, but it got both Dre and Snoop a lot of attention. It showed that Dre could hold his own outside of a group. It also introduced Snoop as a major talent. It also was the first time that Dre really showed his skill in finding talent, something he’d so often over the decades. 

Dre followed that single with his debut album, The Chronic, which heavily featured Snoop, among other acts that Dre was working with. That album changed hip-hop and popular music in America; in its wake, Snoop Dogg released his debut on Death Row. After that, the label signed Tupac Shakur and found itself at the center of pop culture. Alas, it wouldn’t last. 

As we know, Dre left Death Row and started anew with Aftermath Records, which he launched with his next protegee, Eminem. That led to signing 50 Cent and later the Game. More recently, Dre has signed Kendrick Lamar and Anderson .Paak. Of course, from there, he started Beats By Dre and became an exec at Apple Music.  

But on this list, we’re looking at his songs; it’s not a definitive ranking but here are some of his greatest tracks.

• “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Taing” featuring Snoop Dogg from The Chronic (1992)

  The first single from The Chronic; like “Deep Cover,” it featured Snoop. A #2 pop hit, “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” led to a sea change in what type of hip-hop would get played on top 40 radio and on MTV. “Deep Cover” got a lot of love from hip-hop fans, but “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” made both Dre and Snoop into major stars, and ushered in what would be referred to as “The G-Funk era,” which was defined by artists on Death Row and some of their friends (including Dre’s half-brother, Warren G, who was signed to Def Jam). But Dre was the guy leading the charge: as he said in the song, “You never been on a ride like this before/With a producer who can rap and control the maestro/At the same time with the dope rhyme that I kick/You know, and I know, I flow some old funky s—!”

• “F— With Dre Day (And Everybody’s Celebratin’)” featuring Snoop Dogg from 'The Chronic' (1992)

  The end of the video notes that “This video is a work in [sic] fiction. The characters, incidents & plot are a product of the creative imagination of the artist. All characters, incidents & dialogue or words in song in the video are wholly fictional. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.” Yeah, no one believed that. Dr. Dre aired his beefs with his enemies, including the Geto Boys, 2 Live Crew and his former N.W.A.-mate, Eazy-E. That’s part of what people loved about the video, frankly. There had been tons of hip-hop beefs before, but few of them were playing out in a mainstream music video like this.

  Dre really went at Eazy: “Used to be my homie, used to be my ace/Now I wanna slap the taste out yo’ mouth/Make you bow down to the Row/F—in’ me, now I’m f—in’ you, little ho.” This didn’t go unanswered: Eazy’s next album was called It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa. Things got really ugly – and this was well before the social media era. Fortunately, Dre and Eazy made their peace before the latter passed away.

• “Let Me Ride” featuring Snoop Dogg from 'The Chronic' (1992)

  Snoop is on this track, but only in a support role: it’s really just about Dre. And he’s pretty much announcing that he – and hip-hop – are taking over culture. “So won’t you just walk on by?” he raps, a reference to the Dionne Warwick classic (she may have noticed; she later became an outspoken critic of hip-hop and Death Row). “’Cause I’m too hard to lift/And no, this ain’t Aerosmith/It’s the motherfuckin’ D-R-E from the CPT.” He was also leading the way for hip-hop, at least for the next few years: “Just another motherf—in’ day for Dre, so I’ll begin like this/No medallions, dreadlocks or black fists/It’s just that gangster glare with gangster raps.”

• “The Day The N—-z Took Over” featuring Snoop Dogg, RBX, Daz from 'The Chronic' (1992)

  Dre clearly didn’t want to get political on this album: even in N.W.A. he wasn’t the topical writer; that was Ice Cube’s department. But no one in America – and certainly no one in Los Angeles – could ignore the L.A. riots in April 1992, after four officers were found not guilty after severely beating a Black man, Rodney King, and it was caught on videotape.

  As Dre rapped, “Sitting in my living room, calm and collected/Feeling that gotta-get-mine perspective/’Cause what I just heard broke me in half/And half the n—-s I know, plus the n—-s on the Row is bailing/Laugh now, but cry much later/Bloods, Crips on the same squad/With the Ese’s helpin’, n—-, it’s time to rob and mob!” He wasn’t really justifying anything, but telling it how it was. Even though this wasn’t a single, it had a lot of power. It was even more powerful because Dre wasn’t known as a guy to rap about social issues.

• “Natural Born Killaz” featuring Ice Cube from 'Murder Was The Case' (1994)

  When Death Row was at the top of its game, it put out the short film Murder Was The Case, starring Snoop Dogg. But the “Natural Born Killaz” video was a short film of its own: it was clearly a high budget affair, including a car driving into the river (and then being extracted) and featuring cameos from actors John Amos and Art Evans, as well as new Death Row signee Tupac Shakur.

  The song saw Dr. Dre and Ice Cube reuniting for the first time since Cube quit N.W.A., and felt a bit more like a Cube song. Indeed, Cube co-wrote it with Death Row artist J-Flexx; Dre and Sam Sneed produced. And it had the intensity of Cube-era N.W.A. or even his solo debut, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Dre and Cube were at one point supposed to do a duo album together under the name Heltah Skeltah, but it never worked out. At least we got this classic though. Dre and Cube have done a few other songs together over the years (including “Hello,” featuring another N.W.A. member MC Ren), but this was their best post-N.W.A. collaboration.

• “Keep Their Heads Ringin’” from 'Friday' (Soundtrack) (1995)

  Not everyone in N.W.A. was cool with each other yet, but Dr. Dre and Ice Cube mended fences. Cube even made a cameo in “Dre Day,” and here, Dre contributed his first post-Chronic jam to Cube’s Friday film. The film was directed by F. Gary Gray, but Cube starred in it, and co-wrote it with DJ Pooh. It was a huge film; the cast included Chris Tucker, Nia Long, Regina King, and Bernie Mac, to name a few. Friday was the first installment in the franchise and helped launch Ice Cube as a force in Hollywood, not just as an actor but as a power player (the film was co-produced by his Cube Vision company). And it was cool to see Dre on board. This is one of the few Dre songs not to feature another MC (although he samples KRS-One’s song “Mad Crew”). It showed that Dre’s Chronic success wasn’t a one-off: it was a number 10 pop hit and it topped Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart.

• “Been There Done That” from 'Dr. Dre Presents… The Aftermath' (1996)

  This was Dre’s first solo track after launching his new label, Aftermath. The album was a sampler, and in fact most of the talent on the record didn’t last with Aftermath. “Been There Done That” was Dre’s only solo song on the album, and was a kiss-off to Death Row. Here, he pointed out that he was able to leave the streets for the boardroom, and his main concern was making money. “Game is money, and money is game/And broke n—-s make the 45 flame with no shame/Now many people die over these dead green guys/Ignorance and greed take they a– by surprise/It’s the root of all evil and sins/Yet still it makes the world go around like my 20 inch rims.” He also shares some advice for women: “Ladies, get your paper too/Don’t expect for no man to support you, keep it true/ ‘Cause most n—-s erase hoes that’s out for the pesos/My woman’s independent, makin’ dough by the caseloads.”

  The song and the compilation didn’t go over well, but in retrospect, “Been There Done That” holds up well… maybe other than the ballroom dancing in the video.

• “Still D.R.E.” featuring Snoop Dogg from '2001' (1999)

  The lead single from Dre’s “comeback” album, 2001, saw him reuniting with Snoop Dogg and making a bit of an about face from “Been There, Done That.” In the video, he’s driving around L.A. in a lowrider with Snoop, just like old times. But everyone was celebratin’: the song was an instant classic. The lyrics to the song went hard, but not everyone knew that they were written by Jay-Z. Jay was at the top of his game at the time; the lyrics were perfect: “Ladies they pay homage, but haters say Dre fell off/How? N—-, my last album was The Chronic/They wanna know if he still got it/They say rap’s changed, they wanna know how I feel about it.” 2001 eventually was certified six times platinum, so he probably felt pretty good about it. And also, he signed another new rapper to Aftermath, named Eminem. He probably felt pretty good about that, too.

• “Forgot About Dre” featuring Emimem from '2001' (1999)

  2001’s second single featured Dre’s new protegee, Eminem, who was already a massive star. And like on “Still D.R.E.,” Dre seemed to be in defensive mode, quick to point out his legacy: “Who you think brought you the oldies?/Eazy-Es, Ice Cubes, and D.O.C.s/The Snoop D-O-double-Gs/And the group that said, ‘Motherf— the police’/Gave you a tape full of dope beats/To bump when you stroll through in your hood/And when your album sales wasn’t doin’ too good/Who’s the Doctor they told you to go see?”

  But he also addressed the fact that some thought that he fell off after the 1996 sampler, and the fact that the Firm (a group he put together that included Nas, AZ, Foxy Brown and Cormega) wasn’t a hit. “Y’all better listen up closely/All you n—-s that said that I turned pop or The Firm flopped/Y’all are the reason that Dre ain’t been gettin’ no sleep/So f— y’all, all of y’all!/If y’all don’t like me, b— me!”

  Eminem’s rapid fire verse was an instant classic: “Nowadays, everybody wanna talk like they got somethin’ to say/But nothin’ comes out when they move their lips/Just a bunch of gibberish/And motherfuckers act like they forgot about Dre!”

• “The Next Episode” featuring Snoop Dogg, Kurupt and Nate Dogg from '2001' (1999)

  Somehow, Dr. Dre managed to combine embracing nostalgia and being current on 2001. “The Next Episode” was a direct sequel to “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” – the title is a reference to Snoop’s line in that song, “Just chill… ‘til the next episode.” The song opened Dre’s iconic Super Bowl LVI Halftime show in 2022. Snoop’s “Da da da da da” hook is genius in its simplicity and instantly memorable. Including Kurupt and Nate Dogg brought the ’90s G-Funk era into the new millennium. As Snoop said in the song, “When they bang this in the club. baby, you got to get up” and that’s been true for more than two decades.

• “The Message” featuring Mary J Blige and Rell from '2001' (1999)

  A rare introspective song from Dre, it’s dedicated to his late brother, Tyree, who had been killed in 1989. “I’m still paging you, 911, straight in denial/Prayin’ you get it, but no man can choose the card he was dealt/You either quit, or you gon’ play ’em like you get it.” Dre had said in interviews that he wasn’t interested in therapy but he processed his loss in his own way. He rapped, “I done been through all emotions, from in shock, to keepin a poker face/To straight breakin down and showin’ all emotions/I’m anxious to believe in real G’s don’t cry/If that’s the truth, then I’m realizin’ I ain’t no gangsta,” a stunning admission from one of the guys credited with popularizing gangsta rap. “It’s just not me, but you know I’mma always ride wit you/I miss you, sometimes I wish I just died wit’ you.” Mary and Rell’s voices add to the song’s sorrow.

• “Deep Water” featuring Kendrick Lamar, Justus and Anderson .Paak from 'Compton' (2015)

  Dre had a hard time following up 2001; a planned album called “Detox” was shelved. But he started working on Compton during the development and production of the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. The album featured many of Dre’s collaborators from over the years; “Deep Water” was a big flex, as it boasted Kendrick Lamar, the hottest rapper in the world at the time, and he was signed to Dre’s Aftermath Records. “Deep Water” also had Anderson .Paak who would eventually sign to the label as well.

  The song compares the dangers of the rap industry to the dangers of the ocean. But even among those dangers, Dre maintains his confidence: “Would you look over Picasso’s shoulder/And tell him ’bout his brush strokes?/Them opinions, I don’t trust those/I apologize, the city made a n—- so cutthroat/Every hood love me, but it started on one coast/Could’ve stopped in ’86 but I knew that you would want more/I’m on the throne in a place some n—-s won’t go.”

• “ETA” featuring Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes and Anderson .Paak (2022)

  You might have missed this one, but check it out. On this song, all four artists — Snoop, Dre, Anderson .Paak and Busta Rhymes —  look back on their hometowns. Dre is on the mic but he puts the spotlight on his co-stars as always. In the opening verse, he goes back and forth with Anderson .Paak: “Uh, I been around, marathon,” Dre raps. “Compton to Avalon/Me and Anderson, this is like Royal Tenenbaums.”

  Paak responds, “No one goes to cinemas, so we on demand/They want a hologram, it’s TikTok and dances!” Dre returns, “Big shot, been the bomb, make me reminisce upon/I remеmber me and Dogg, swap meet, Dickies on.”

  Anderson asks, “Whеn was that? In ’93?” Dre interjects, “You probably wasn’t even born!”

  “Dre, I think you need to trade the Range for the 64!”

  “S—, I’ve been going back and forth, Chevy or Aventador
  Took a walk in the park…” Anderson interrupts, “N—-, that’s your backyard!”

  It’s a fun song to end this list on, as we wait to see what Dre does next.

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