The year was 1996. Dr. Dre had managed to disentangle himself from the talons of Suge Knight and Death Row Records. Dre had started his own label, Aftermath, and was ready to sit back, renounce his gangsta image and watch the money roll in. While Death Row was reeling from the death of 2Pac and the disappointing sales of Snoop's Doggfather album, Dre was poised to start a new rap empire.  
 
So out he came with this Aftermath sampler compilation, and we didn't hear from him again for three years. The reason? The album more or less sucked, and Dre's midas production touch was missing on most of the four or five songs he actually had a hand in.  
 
It's a shame, too, because the one Dre track on the album, "Been There, Done That," is really good. The production is smooth and silky, with distinctive percussion and a lazy bass line, and Dre sounds more confident and comfortable than ever as he brags about his earthly possessions. ("I've got a palace in the hills overlooking the sea / It's worth eight, but I only paid 5.3.") An entire post-gangsta Dre album in this vein would have sold through the roof, but alas, he hadn't the creative energy for it.  
 
The other album highlights can be summed up in a couple paragraphs. KRS-One, Nas and B-Real of Cypress Hill perform under the name Group Therapy with "East Coast / West Coast Killas," a Dre-produced track that picks up where "Natural Born Killas" left off. The vocal trade-offs are seamless, the bass is solid and the whistling Dre synth is bad@ss as ever.  
 
Mel-Man, who co-produced Dr. Dre 2001, gets his solo track in "Sh**tin' on the World," which overcomes its rather non-descript Dre beat with humor, intentional and otherwise. (Mel's liner notes read, "I grew up with roaches y'am saying straight reppin' the projects to the fullest!")  
 
The aborted R+B girl group Hands-On turns in the piano-heavy, sultry groove "Got Me Open" with a Dre rap reminiscent of the same era's "No Diggity." And RC (the only artist on the album with two songs) turns in a decent, funky remake of David Bowie's "Fame."  
 
Otherwise, the album is indistinct, passed down to Dre production apprentices like Bud'da, Floyd Howard, Flossy P and Maurice Wilcher. There's a reason acts like Miscellaneous, King T, Nowl and Sharief never took off. As an intro record-label sampler, you have to wonder if Dre planned to produce or oversee albums from all these acts or if he was just looking to put together a half-@ssed compilation and laugh all the way to the bank while Death Row went under. Either way, it was a mistake.  
