"Chronic 2000": Death Row Snatches the Title from Dr. Dre and Adds Tupac

In the Billboard chart week of May 22, 1999, a double album debuted at No. 11 on the US album charts: Suge Knight Represents: Chronic 2000, released via Death Row and Priority. The title was a declaration of war. Dr. Dre had planned Chronic 2000 as the title for his first album in years, as the follow-up to his classic The Chronic.

A Sampler Against the Former Partner

Suge Knight was serving a prison sentence in California at the time and ran Death Row from prison. According to a retrospective by Stereogum, the label rushed the sampler out to thwart Dre’s plans. The 28 tracks came predominantly from second-tier artists on the roster, alongside unreleased Tupac songs. The label’s main asset had long been Tupac’s archive: in his eleven months at Death Row, according to Stereogum, he had recorded more than 200 songs. RapReviews wrote in 2000 that Death Row dug up “another song or two” by Tupac for each of its samplers.

Daz Dillinger, who was still with Death Row himself at the time, called the album Knight’s idea to get back at Dre in a 2015 interview with Vlad TV (HipHopDX).

Dre Backs Down

Dre gave in. MTV News reported on October 13, 1999, that he had dropped the title because of the Death Row sampler. Following intermediate stages such as “Chronic 2001”, according to Interscope it was now set to be called “Dr. Dre 2001”. In stores, according to Stereogum, it later simply appeared as 2001.