Review Summary: Welcome to Death Row BIATCH.
This is the best produced hip-hop album of all the time. Now, don't get me wrong, I love DJ Premier, RZA, Dan the Animator, and Outkast is my favorite rap group (who produced a lot of my favorite songs), but I have to give credit where it's due. I liked Public Enemy and their fight-the-power lyrics, but I couldn't get into the production because of all the scratching and the music wasn't hit as hitting as hard. NWA on the other hand, which was also very socially-conscious and even more controversial but also the music was funky as hell and so I liked 'em more. I always wondered why until I realized Dr. Dre was in the right place at the right time like his contemporary Ice Cube and took every opportunity he had to reach the apex.
Dre's two musical influences are clearly Ice-T and George Clinton. Remember him? Funk legend? Dre had the smart idea of putting out Ice-T's intelllectual and controversial gangsta music with funk, coming up with G-Funk. That somehow made hardcore songs top the pop charts. People can't handle the funk, my man. This is the seminal G-Funk album. SoCal would listen to that genre exclusively for at least the next 5 years while veteran producers like Pimp C would dap him up by saying "I got them 16 switches like Dre." Oh, and Death Row sold more records than any other record company in hip hop to this day. To make things even funnier, This was the same producer that saw past gangs by teaming with Snoop, played an older brother to Tupac, and was the only big time producer to look past race and sign Eminem.
On to the record. It starts with with the hypest intro I've heard in a rap album with Snoop Dogg talking some serious *** on a electric, mind-blowing beat. What follows is one of the biggest and most sobering singles with "*** with Dre Day" which on its own is excellent, but it's sad to think of Easy-E dying of AIDS a couple years later. The songs maintain their level of production until even non-rap listeners hear that song they probably heard at some point, "Ain't Nuthin' but a G Thang," an incredibly funky song that reminds people that Gs use guns to conduct business and *** women for fun.
Hell, even "Deeeez Nuts" is a great song. It's followed with the best song on the album, "Lil' Ghetto Boy" which has the rappers contemplating the consequences of living the way they do--also, Dre and Daz Dillinger's production is phenomenal here. "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat" has an electric sound and an intro that is also socially conscious and then goes completely in the other direction haha. Wordplay and lyricism is good, but where its true beauty lies in its production. It also introduces the Slick Rick-inspired Snoopy Doggy Dogg (and I mean that with all respect to Froggy Dogg because I love him) whose Californian drawl but perfectly-timed slang was memorable and he continues to be one of the one of the most memorable voices and flows in Hip Hop.
So even though I tend value clever wordplay and lyrics, I can't deny the fact that Dre's beats on this album never hesitate to leave a n*gga on this back. So if you heard this album before, roll up some chronic and go down memory lane, but if somehow you didn't please do so ASAP.
