Dr. Dre will receive
ASCAP's inaugural Hip-Hop Icon Award during its Rhythm & Soul Music Awards Celebration of 50 Years of Hip-Hop Thursday (6/22) at the London West Hollywood. Fellow hip-hop artists
Kid Capri and
DJ Drama will serve as musical guests.
“Dr. Dre’s groundbreaking early work laid a foundation for hip-hop as we know it today,” said ASCAP President/Chairman
Paul Williams. "As a champion for some of today’s biggest artists and a successful entrepreneur, he changed the culture around hip-hop.”
Dr. Dre's career began in 1983 with electro outfit
World Class Wreckin' Cru. In the late '80s, he took a hard left and formed the trailblazing gangsta rap group
N.W.A alongside
Eazy-E,
DJ Yella,
MC Ren,
Ice Cube and
Arabian Prince.
Their debut album,
Straight Outta Compton, arrived on
Ruthless Records in 1988 and forever changed the rap landscape.
After branching out on his own, Dre released his seminal solo album,
The Chronic, on
Death Row Records in 1992. Four years later, he went on to form
Aftermath Entertainment in partnership with
Interscope, home to artists like
Eminem,
50 Cent,
The Game and, for a brief time,
Eve. Over the years, he's produced tracks for
JAY-Z,
Snoop Dogg,
Kendrick Lamar,
Nas and many more.
In 2014,
Apple purchased
Beats by Dre—the good doctor's headphone company with
Jimmy Iovine—which included $2.6b in cash and roughly $400m in stock, making Dre the wealthiest hip-hop artist in the world.
