Dr. Dre

Andre Romelle Young (born February 18, 1965), primarily known by his stage name Dr. Dre, is an American record producer, rapper, record executive, and actor. He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and a former co-owner and artist of Death Row Records, also having produced albums for and overseeing the careers of many rappers signed to those record labels, such as Snoop Dogg, Eminem and 50 Cent. As a producer he is credited as a key figure in the popularization of West Coast G-funk, a style of rap music characterized as synthesizer-based with slow, heavy beats. Dr. Dre began his career in music as a member of the World Class Wreckin' Cru and he later found fame with the influential gangsta rap group N.W.A with Eazy-E and Ice Cube which popularized the use of explicit lyrics in rap to detail the violence of street life. His 1992 solo debut, The Chronic, released under Death Row Records, led him to become one of the best-selling American performing artists of 1993 and to win a Grammy Award for the single "Let Me Ride". In 1996, he left Death Row to establish his own label, Aftermath Entertainment. Under that label, he produced a compilation album titled, Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath in 1996, and released a solo album titled 2001 in 1999, for which he won the Grammy producer's award the next year.  The first child of Theodore and Verna Young, Dr. Dre was born André Romelle Young on February 18, 1965, when his mother and father were ages 16 and 17; they married in 1964. Young's middle name, "Romelle," came from his father's unsigned amateur R&B singing group, The Romells. In 1968, his parents divorced, and his mother later married Curtis Crayon. They had three more children together, two sons named Jerome and Tyree (both deceased)[2][3] and daughter Shameka. In 1976 Young began attending Vanguard Junior High School but due to gang violence around Vanguard he transferred to the safer suburban Roosevelt Junior High School.Verna later married Warren Griffin, whom she met at her new job in Long Beach,which added three new stepsisters and one new stepbrother to the family. That stepbrother, Warren Griffin III, would eventually become rapper Warren G.