Since releasing The Chronic in 1992, Dr Dre spent the rest of the 90s watching the gangsta rap style he helped birth and popularise completely take over the genre. It wasn’t just a dominant force in hip-hop, it was the dominant force in music – full stop. But after releasing his second solo album, 2001 on 16 November 1999, Dre was back for the throne with a new generation of talent and an album that would define an era.

Following Dre’s debut, 2001 entered the charts at No.2 on the US Billboard 200 and remains one of the best-selling hip-hop albums of all time. Though it was only Dre’s second studio album, for 16 years, it felt like it would also be his final one. After years (and years) of teasing an album called Detox – rap’s equivalent of Chinese Democracy – Dr Dre released his third album, Compton, coinciding with the release of NWA’s biopic, Straight Outta Compton. Compton was a victory lap; a statement and a celebration of the collaborators Dre had worked with throughout his storied career – a career that is most often defined by the first entry in Dre’s trilogy, The Chronic.

But, a few decades later, it’s easy to see that 2001 was just as impactful, if not more forward-thinking than its predecessor, future-proofing itself to be a timeless hip-hop album.