2001 was the first hiphop album i had, when i was in year 9. i picked up the chronic shortly after that. its hard to listen to the big tunes off 2001 anymore because theyāre so hugely overplayed, and also overplayed in quite weird settings all things considered (english radio, indie discos). Whatās The Difference was always my favourite and still is I think. At the time I liked the Dre self-mythologizing. It reminds me a bit of a kids cartoon series like Power Rangers or something, where he has a gang of people with cool names that he keeps referring to, and who pop up here and there on the album. surprised to hear a reference to ācatching feelingsā on Whatās The Difference, I thought that was a more recent neologism.
The Chronic is more in line with stuff that Iād listen to now. G funk was a bit unrelatable when i was a teenager but I love that sound now. it is undeniably a nasty, ugly album. Fuck Wit Dre Day is a banger but itās a weird listen and its not like the lyrics are a minor part of it or anything. the fact that this stuff resonated in one way or another with so many people is pretty interesting. think even in g funk terms something like The Chronic is a bit of a claustrophobic sound and not that into Dreās rapping really, I mean the whole thing pales in comparison to something like Doggystyle, or even bits and pieces of Ice Cube.
never cared about NWA. know that theyāre considered one of the classics but it never clicked (but then thereās not a lot of pre-90s hiphop that does click with me, except the reaaaaaaaly old stuff).
i guess the other thing iāve always liked about Dre and his comrades is that in the villages that i grew up in, there was something pretty hilarious about the whole thing. it did always sound a bit silly, all these guys rapping about how hard they are, about weed and guns and so on. sounds a bit different now obviously being a bit more worldly, but it was hard to take them seriously at the time.
Honestly never a huge NWA fan - at the time, I gravitated more to people like Native Tongues or Run DMC if I wanted to listen to something a bit harder. I like Dreās beats but Ice Cube was the only one I really rated as a rapper.
Loved The Chronic and Doggystyle at the time, have little desire to listen to them these days, especially the Snoop album. Iāll hold my hands up - I still listen to and enjoy a lot of hip hop from the 80s and 90s with some very ignorant content, but certain tracks on Doggystyle make me cringe.
Ice Cube a 5/5 for me - one of the best ever to do it. But he really clicked when he started working with The Bomb Squad and Muggs.
I like a lot of hip hop, but for some reason, bar the obvious hits from both, Iāve never really listened to them. Iām interesting in how the thread unfolds to see which of their stuff I should check out though.
Having said that, if all Dre has done is bring us Kendrick Lamar, I think I owe him for that.
Tbh I donāt really know how responsible Dre is for Kendrick, itās not really like Eminem where he made him famous/gave him beats etc. Kendrick already had one of the most hyped albums of 2011. In fact, the best decision Kendrick made was leaving Dreās production off GKMC entirely, since heād completely run out of ideas long ago at that point.
If Dre didnāt sign Kendrick, Iām sure someone else would have chucked money at him.
Ice Cube has great delivery but I feel The Predator borrows the G Funk more than evolves it, this said I feel the creativity therefore really was with Dre. All these acts, well most played out some important social commentary around the Rodney King killing. The artist that mirrored that sorry event with the most precise commentary was probably Ice-T.
I really donāt think of that album as G-funk sounding, aside from 1 or 2 tracks. I know he returned to using some west coast producers, but it still sounds more east coast to me (maybe because I listen to the Muggs tracks the most).
obvs the highlights are absolute all timers but yeah, donāt really listen to much nwa. prefer dre and particularly cubeās (HGATR ice cube: 5/5) solo stuff, but also a lot of the west coast stuff from around the same time / that followed in their wake - dj quik, cmw, above the law, etc
the chronic still sounds great to me, although can totally understand people being put off by the misogyny which is excessive even by the standards of the genre/time.
2001 is a weird one, who is hittman and why is he all over it
Iāve not heard it since the 90ās and might be getting it mixed up with Lethal Injection. Aside from his more accessible tracks Iāve never really rated Ice Cubeās solo albums. His delivery is great but his material, by enlarge, has never appealed as directly as Dr. Dr, Ice T, Snoop or indeed Eminem.
The first Eazy-E album is really good as a time piece and Iāve always really liked it, not sure if it pre-dates Straight Outta Compton.
NWA had great flow and when their tracks worked the did so with real gusto. Thinking about them now and artists around them at the time, I feel NWA, like Punk, inspired people to get in a band, inspired people to pick up a mic. Sure Public Enemy to a point were better but you felt in awe of PE. NWA had that do it vibe. Flawed sure - but inspirational with itā¦
if he was that sincere about being sorry for the domestic abuse he could have got the story told in the film but nah, just avoided it then when it was too much to avoid after the fact he addressed it in a couple of weak, short statements. He paid for what he did? a fine and probation? nah. 0/5
Probably the hardest one so far. Dre is responsible for the fact that for around 5-10 years hip hop was reduced to a weird teenage fantasy about gangbangs and bongs and gunsā¦ but there are some absolutely undeniable tunes there.
Still Dre and Whatās the Difference are big standouts for me and that album came about when I was 16 and (after an absolutely horrendous 4-5 years in school for reasons Iām not going to get into) fell in with a good group of people for the first time - telling my Iām still friends with most of them 20 years down the line. Long-winded way of saying that nostalgia for that record makes it very very hard to be objective.
I guess the question is āhow great reallyā rather than ādoes elights feel warm and fuzzyā though and these days it is a very very long way from my favourite hip hop.
I guess for that and for the rampant misogyny, itās going to be hard going above 3.
