It turns out that one of the songs that every pianist aspires to perform in 2023 is Dr. Dre’s iconic single Still D.R.E., featuring Snoop Dogg.
According to new research data by Ukulele World, the 1999 chart topping hit single is one of the top searches among Americans looking to learn tunes on the piano. The track’s iconic riff was composed by legendary Scott Storch, who explained how he came up with it when he spoke to Rap Money in 2022:
“I was thinking all night about something like, kind of like a piano piece that’s wrong but ‘right’, you know what I mean? Where it’s kind of off-beat, and I was like ‘oh s–t, it goes kind of with this drum pattern’. And I started playing ‘bling bling bling bling’… the notes were kind of like, I was playing it sloppy on purpose, and Dre just ran in the room like ‘That’s it man! That’s the f–king thing right there!”
Still Dre has an average of almost 20,000 monthly ‘how to play’ searches among pianists in the United Sates, but there are songs that are even more popular. “Jingle Bells” tops the list with an average of more than 28,000 searches – weighted heavily towards late November and December, we assume – followed by Beethoven’s perennial favorite “Fur Elise.| John Legend’s “All Of Me” sneaks into third place, with “Still D.R.E.” and JVKE’s “Golden Hour” rounding out the top five.
“Still D.R.E.” is a lead single from Dre’s multi-platinum second solo studio album, 2001, released in 1999.
Anchored by a memorable staccato keyboard vamp, the single was popular, helping the album reach multi-platinum status and announcing Dre’s return to the forefront of the hip-hop scene. “Still D.R.E.” debuted and peaked at number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1999 before re-entering and peaking at number 23 in 2022. It was more successful in the United Kingdom, where it reached No. 6.
The song has been performed live numerous times by both Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Notable performances include the 2000 Up in Smoke Tour and as the final song in the Super Bowl LVI halftime show on February 13, 2022, alongside fellow American rappers Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent. and Anderson .Paak, with the latter on drums.
