COMPTON AND COMPANY IN THE MARKETPLACE

With its streaming window over for now, Dr. Dre’s sonically ambitious (and already heavily acclaimed) Compton (Aftermath/Interscope) is only available as an iTunes download, and it remains #1 on the download emporium’s album chart (with Luke Bryan’s Kill the Lights, with which it competes for #1 on next week’s retail chart, just behind).

Meanwhile, Dre’s original The Chronic—which only became available digitally at the end of June—has moved up to #11; The Chronic 2001 sits at #22 and N.W.A’s 1988 bombshell Straight Outta Compton is #41.

N.W.A’s breakout, originally released on Ruthless via Bryan Turner’s Priority (and having sold some 3 million copies) and reissued by Bruce Resnikoff’s UMe, will get a big tie-in push.

The intensive, multi-platform rollout that will ride the momentum of the hugely anticipated Compton film. In addition to a huge retail push, this will include social ubiquity (Facebook, Instagram), a band family-tree microsite, Vevo visibility for classic clips (like the one below) with a playlist feature, Shazam sweeps, contests that invite fans to create their own artwork, Q&As with group alumnus DJ Yella and considerably more.

It’s noteworthy that Dre’s massively influential first Chronic (originally on Death Row Records, and now owned by eOne, though digital rights reportedly reverted to Dre in 2011) has sold 5.7 million albums RTD, and that essentially all of that—minus whatever it’s sold on iTunes in the last month—is physical. The Chronic 2001 has moved 7.8m. It's also available for streaming on Apple Music, Spotify and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Ice Cube’s Priority and Lench Mob releases racked up 12.6m albums, 2.9m physical singles and 4.5m digital tracks. N.W.A’s Eazy E sold 2m+ copies of his Ruthless/Priority solo set Eazy Duz it.