In an interview with Vibe, rap mogul Dr. Dre reveals that he is working on an instrumental album to be titled "The Planets."

It's just my interpretation of what each planet sounds like. I'm gonna go off on that. Just all instrumental. I've been studying the planets and learning the personalities of each planet. I've been doing this for about two years now just in my spare time so to speak. I wanna do it in surround sound. It'll have to be in surround sound for Saturn to work.

[via The Atlantic / illo: Xeni]

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Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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pyster

The comments start out ok… and then they degrade into unfunny people failing to be funny.
- Scaramanga9
  
  And then they degrade into pointless whinging.
Rick.

Detox is never coming out.
narrowstreetsLA

What’s with all the “it’s been done before” hate? Dre does the mothafuckin solar system, people!

Oh, and have you heard there’s a ring around Uranus?
Anonymous

He is a Doctor after all!
gwailo_joe

Mista Pluto, where the fuck ya at?
Ain’t got the size, so you rollin’ on ya back
Busta ass moon: check my elocution
you ain’t got the pull or the revolution
Mark Bitch non-Planet
Bust a cap in your gravitational field, Goddammit!
Prufrock451

“I got nine problems, but Pluto ain’t one”
Anonymous

“F**kin’ Miracles!”

They should make a duett.
SFedor

I could hear a sweet beat under this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C6lymtHG60
Trotsky

DRE: It’s like one, to the two, to the three, and to the fo’.
Dr. Dre and Buzz Aldrin comin’ creepin’ at your do’.
Straight up gangsta reppin’ South Central Milky Wizzle.
Droppin’ dope planet beats on your dome ’til you shizzle.

Take it, Buzz!

BUZZ: I… lost my shoe.

DRE: Hell, yeah! West side!
- gwailo_joe
  
  Holla I say! G’s up, Plutos down! ‘I lost my shoe’! ROTFLOL heehee
Anonymous

Anyone else have a copy of “NASA:Symphony of the Planets”? By far one of the coolest cd sets my dad ever bought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA:_Symphonies_of_the_Planets_Vol._I-V

I’m not a fan of rap (I like the more whimsical bits such as Skee-lo’s “I WIsh”), but even I appreciate that Dr.Dre puts effort into his work, rather than just setting loops of clicks, thumps, and ticks, and calling it good.

Also, is anyone else hopeful that this will get more youths into astronomy/science?
- Rob Cruickshank
  
  As anon#60 says, it would be a good thing if it got even one kid into astronomy. If Rush can get kids interested in black holes, then Dre can get them into the planets.
Antinous / Moderator

Planets wit big moons, AKs and 187 skillz.
Trotsky

DRE: It’s like one, to the two, to the three, and to the fo’.
Dr. Dre and Stephen Hawking comin’ creepin’ at your do’.
Nabbin’ planetary pussy from every hoochie we be peepin’.
My man Hawk ready to bust it even though looks like he’s sleepin’.

Drop the hammer, Hawk!

HAWK: They. Call. Me. Stevie. Money. Cuz. Chin. Checks. I. Be. Cashin’.
My. Trump. Tight. Scooter. Be. In. Inter. Galactic. Fashion.
I’m. Known. On. Mars. On. Saturn. And. On. Venus.
For. My. Super. Dope. Hoochie. Splitting. Cyber. Netic. Penis.

DRE: Hell, yeah! West side!

HAWK: End. Rap.
- Pantograph
  
  Now don’t go dissin on Mc Hawking.
Anonymous

I knew this was coming after seeing that laptop commercial with him on a space ship. Dre and Neptunes should do a collab solar system album. HEAT
scifijazznik

Trust me, any Sun Ra record would be better.
TomDArch

He is clearly NOT going to be invited to next year’s Gathering of the Juggalos.
anpl32

all i can say is: he must partner with brian may.
Felton

If we can have two operas based on The Merry Wives of Windsor, we can sure as Hell have a symphonic work and a hip hop album based on the planets of the solar system. I can’t wait to hear this. :-D
gwailo_joe

Mars

Redder than the blood in my Daddys eye
God of War; Betta Recognize
Panic and Fear my only companions
Buckshot astroids in all directions

Mercury

Messenger straight outta compton jack
Slap you with my winged feet
smoke you like a crack sack
I’m Iron Core fool, now who’s spacin’?
What you punks know about the Caloris Basin?
Jeroenemans

Music of the Spheres is an album by Ian Brown, who headed the Inspiral Carpets in days yonder… I woulnt mind listening to a collaboration between them :D
Anonymous

Ummm… http://www.artsjournal.com/gap/2010/08/update-one-ring-zero-beats-dre.html
gwailo_joe

Jupiter

Red Eye like Sauron
ya fuckin’ moron
Biggest Baddest
ya gotta have this
King of the Gods
and the Planets too
63 moons? I’m indivisible foo’!
Visible for shizable
you can’t see me
like Giovanni Cassini
Better get back on track man
I’ll eat them other planets like Pac Man

and with a final “Laika? That’s my dog!’ We out! Peace!
Anonymous

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it..wait, if a planet passes gas and nobody’s there to hear it, hmmm,….
Ehhh..Either way,who cares?
WORDISBOND

This could be great. Drive-bys from comets, “not understanding the gravity of the situation” etc. And Neptune could rid of Pluto by attacking it at a party, punching it in the back of the head, trying to throw it down the stairs etc. Saturn and Jupiter could hold off the other planets from intervening.
Anonymous

Epacs4zaggin.
Trotsky

It took 20 comments before Uranus was mentioned?

People, we need to work on our response time.

We can do better.
Trotsky

I’m disappointed this will be instrumental. If anyone could figure out a rhyme for Mercury, it would be Dre.
Anonymous

This is the single greatest idea I have ever heard.
grimc

Somebody get Dr. Dre with Dr. May, stat.
7ape

I just wonder what his next excuse for not finishing detox will be…

“I’m travelling to Guatemala for 3 years to learn mystic throat singing.. I had this idea to make an album using only samples that come to me in dreams… I’ve been thinking a lot about DNA and I really wanna crack the human genome before getting back into detox”
Anonymous

Hip-hop Holst
cinemajay

Sounds cool!
Antinous / Moderator

So….The Chronic 2010.
Anonymous

Roll over Gustav Holst!
candycritic

Don’t hate a playa for bein’ down with the cosmos.
Clayton

Wow, the comments here are special. Tip: if you know very little about hip-hop and Dr. Dre in particular, and proceed commenting as though all rap and Dr. Dre in particular exists in a culture of violent, gangsta idiocies, you just might come off as a jackass.
- Trotsky
  
  Suggesting that Dre is somehow besmirched by being associated with gangsta rap is the very essence of ignorance of hip hop since Dre is to gangsta rap as James Brown is to soul. Second, it assumes that gangsta rap is some misshapen and inauthentic mutation of hip hop, instead of an essential trajectory that has given the art form its greatest and most profound practitioners. Third, gangsta rap is often violent, yes. Your point? Finally, criticism of gangsta rap is almost always used as a middle brow cudgel to batter hip hop by those who want to pretend that it doesn’t belong in “true” hip hop. However, you will *NEVER* ever find a hip hop enthusiast who seriously tries to exile gangsta rap from the canon. That person does not exist.
sally599

Seems like this has been done before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planets
- Teller
  
  Yeah, but these are the planets orbiting him.
- Tdawwg
  
  A hip-hop Holst, in other words.
  
  Imagine a hip-hop “Mars, Bringer of War”!
Anonymous

If you’ve ever listened to Dr. Octagon (Kool Keith), you’ll know he isn’t pleased with other rappers copying his “space style”.
- Anonymous
  
  Really?
  
  Then I guess he shouldn’t have copied it from from Sun Ra, who copied it from…okay, okay, who am I kidding: Sun Ra sprang whole from the head of an interdimensional Gorgon.
- gwailo_joe
  
  I can’t resist:
  
  First patient, pull out the skull, remove the cancer
  Breakin’ his back, chisel necks for the answer
  Supersonic bionic robot voodoo power
  Equator ex my chance to flex skills on Ampex
  With power meters and heaters gauge anti-freeze
  Octagon oxygen, aluminum intoxicants
  More ways to blow blood cells in your face
  React with four bombs and six fire missiles
  Armed with seven rounds of space doo-doo pistols
  You may not believe, livin’ on the Earth planet
  My skin is green and silver, warhead lookin’ mean
  Astronauts get played, tough like the ukelele
  As I move in rockets, overriding, levels
  Nothing’s aware, same data, same system
  
  Earth People, New York and California
  Earth People, I was born on Jupiter
  
  Now my helmet’s on, you can’t tell me I’m not in space
  With the National Guard United States Enterprise
  Diplomat of swing with aliens at my feet
  Comin’ down the rampart through beam on the street
  Obsolete computes, compounds and dead sounds
  As I locate intricately independent
  Economic rhymer got savoury store food
  In Capsule D my program is ability
  For a reaction and response to a no-one
  Identification Code: Unidentified
  I got cosmophonic, pressed a button, changed my face
  You recognised, so what? I turned invisible
  Made myself clear, reappeared to you visual
  Disappear again, zapped like a android
  Face the fact, I fly on planets every day
  My nucleus friend, prepare, I return again
  My 7XL is not yet invented
  
  Space Ranger, contact tubes, send synthetics
  I program one and go to Earth through the fax machine
  My number’s Seven-Oh-Nine Seven-Five-Five Six-E-L-Three
  Computer File: Nine-Three
  Digital level, standing on the terminal
  Upside down through polygons fightin’ pentagons
  Changin’ blue skin, my brown colour’s comin’ back
  I’m psychedelic this time, come in rainbow
  Look at the green lights and y’all see my brain glow
  Five colours: yellow, black and red and green…purple
  
  (oh Doctor Octagon, where are you when the Galaxy needs you so? : )
benher

Now that’s what I call a still more glorious dawn!
el_oyente

So long as the album has 8 tracks, not 9. And released on 8-Track (ugh)
- A New Challenger
  
  Track 9 will be a bonus/hidden track entitled “Fuck Pluto Day.”
Anonymous

don’t forget wendy carlos’ “digital moonscapes.”

http://www.wendycarlos.com/+dmci.html
miah

It has been done before, several times.

Tomita.
http://www.isaotomita.net/recordings/planets.html

Patrick Gleeson
http://www.endlessgroove.com/issue1/gleeson.htm
- Artimus Mangilord
  
  It’s actually Holst’s compositions that Tomita used. I have that album and it’s awesome if you’re into synths.
- rain_globule
  
  Yeah, but it’s never been done by Dr. Dre, gangsta rapper.
Trotsky

DRE: You busters and you haters know I’m always on my game.
My cosmo’s heliocentric cuz my black hole spittin’ flame.
I’m celestial ghetto ballin’ with ankle-breaking Copernicism.
Filling up my people’s ears with my planetary jism.
fydhws

Sorry Dr. Dre for making this project before you, with “personalities” and such…
http://www.last.fm/user/fydhws/journal/2010/07/24/3so6i3_sounds_of_the_spheres
and
http://www.last.fm/user/fydhws/journal/2010/07/28/3t07ze_sounds_of_the_spheres,_pt._ii
coming part III soon…
Richard@Home

Reminds me very much of an album by an old friend of mine (now sadly departed).

Harmony of the Spheres ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harmony-Spheres-Neil-Ardley/dp/B001ILDECG ) by Neil Ardley

His concept was to construct a musical scale based on the distance between each planet.

He did a follow up album called ‘Kaleidoscope-Rainbows’ ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kaleidoscope-Rainbows-Neil-Ardley/dp/B0007TJYXI/ref=pd_bxgy_m_h__img_b ) using a musical scale based on the frequencies of the colour spectrum.

Awesome stuff.
- Jeroenemans
  
  I owned that kaleidoscope album !!!… it was awesome! I never could find anything about it anywhere..
Tim

The more I hit the chronic, the more I think about space too…makes perfect sense to me that Dre headed this direction.
endymion

At least he’s not going to attempt Saturn without surround sound.
- awerich
  
  Lol, right?!?, otherwise what’s the point of doing any of it.
jose602

Considering that Dr. Dre’s post-Chronic 2001 opus, DETOX, has been an off and on affair for the past 10 years, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Anonymous

everything has been done before. that’s why we call it culture, don’t we?

.~.
Lyzard

hey heyy heyyy smoke weed everyday.

Maybe Dre’s been gettin down with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.
http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/carl-sagan-spaced-ou.html
McLuhanesque

Dr. Dre – you be gettin all jiggy wit dat Saturn sh*t. It be done before before wit dat archangel of jiggy jazz, Sun Ra, he of da Angel Race, bein from Saturn and all, wit his Archestra.
Drowse

Someone already mentioned Dr. May..

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128935865

As a Queen fan (the user name is a Queen song!) I can’t let this one slide..
Sork

Will be sold in discrete paper bags because of Ura**s.
Rob Cruickshank

about that “g” thang:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_gravity
Daedalus

Cain’t wait. Fuckin’ cosmic, dog.
Anonymous

WOW, a recording I’d actually be interested in buying!
Anonymous

I’ve always wondered what Uranus’ personality must be like. I bet it’s really anal.
edbh

Fuckin’ celestial bodies moving in elliptical orbits around slef-luminous gaseous spheres, how do they work
JDavid

I know when I think astronomy, the cosmos, and physics, I think Dr. Dre.

Dr. Dre, astronomy buff, working on "music of the spheres" instrumental concept album

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