After buying the iconic Death Row brand and catalog last month and promising to transform it into “an NFT label” operating in the metaverse, fans were perplexed this weekend to find several key albums missing from all streaming services. Snoop appears to have removed albums including Dr. Dre‘s 1992 debut The Chronic, his own seven-times platinum 1993 debut Doggystyle and Kurupt and Daz Dillinger‘s Tha Dogg Pound project’s 1995 Dogg Food from streaming services.
2pac‘s two 1996 Death Row albums, All Eyez On Me and The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, remain on streaming, since they are no longer a part of Death Row catalog that Snoop acquired from the Blackstone-controlled MNRK Music Group (formerly eOne Music).
Reps for Snoop, Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music did not respond to requests for comment at time of publishing.
As the legendary rapper has outlined the big plans he has for his previous label home, including taking it to the multiverse and transforming it into an NFT fixture, the terms of the deal disclose which projects won’t be under the iconic West Coast hip-hop brand. Multiple sources have told Billboard that The Chronic is also scheduled to be returned as soon as next year. The Chronic and Doggystyle, which are two of the titles currently missing from streamers, are the Death Row catalog’s biggest sellers (excluding compilations), with each earning nearly 169,000 album consumptions units in 2021.
On Monday (March 14), Snoop released Death Row Mix: Vol. 1 for sale as NFTs on the new Web3 music startup Sound XYZ, describing it as a nearly half-hour DJ mix of “some bits and pieces from my friends and family for you to enjoy. Even a couple minutes for you to throw your own verse in there,” Snoop said. Sound XYZ announced on Twitter that the 1,000 limited edition NFTs of the mix had sold out in under an hour and the website had crashed, but that the secondary market had opened.
In an interview with Tidal published earlier this month, the “Gin and Juice” rapper boasted about which albums he has under the Death Row deal and how he hoped to bring his fellow Super Bowl 2022 Halftime Show performer and Death Row Records co-founder Dre back home. “I got The Chronic album. I got Doggystyle, Tha Doggfather, Murder Was the Case, Dogg Food, Above the Rim. I got all those records,” he said at the time.
Dr. Dre’s attorney, Howard King, later issued a statement saying, “There are false reports out regarding ownership by Death Row of Dr. Dre’s ‘The Chronic’. Dr. Dre owns 100% of The Chronic.”
Billboard
