2001 (Dr. Dre album) sound and the strings and orchestration. So I'd be on the keyboards, and Mike [Elizondo] was on the bass guitar, and Dre was on the drum machine." Josh Tyrangiel of "Time" has described the recording process which Dr. Dre employs, stating "Every Dre track begins the same way, with Dre behind a drum machine in a room full of trusted musicians. (They carry beepers. When he wants to work, they work.) He'll program a beat, then ask the musicians to play along; when Dre hears something he likes, he isolates the player and tells him how to refine the sound."
Dr. Dre recorded prior to the group's official formation, would prominently feature Dr. Dre on the turntable. The record would become the group's first hit, selling 50,000 copies within the Compton area. Dr. Dre and DJ Yella also performed mixes for local radio station KDAY, boosting ratings for its afternoon rush-hour show "The Traffic Jam". Dr. Dre's earliest recordings were released in 1994 on a compilation titled "Concrete Roots". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of the website AllMusic described the compiled music, released "several years before Dre developed a distinctive style", as "surprisingly generic and unengaging" and "for dedicated fans only". His frequent absences