The accompanying video added to its popularity, as it depicted Dre and Snoop weaving their way through a Saturday in South Central Los Angeles. It prominently featured Dre and Snoop trading lines and verses over a sample of Leon Haywood’s “I Want'a Do Something Freaky To You,” along with extra keyboards and synths played by Dre himself. No song better typified this new approach than “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” which dropped in November 1992 with the impact of a calm bomb. It was great music to play in a park, at a barbecue, or in the car. The beats still maintained their overall “gangsta” sensibilities, but the project was often more mellow than the hyper-aggressive music he put together for N.W.A. Sampling funk records wasn’t new to hip-hop or even to gangsta rap, but Dre found a way to fuse it with his own live instrumentation to make it sound unique. Many of the beats are built around samples of funk songs, often from artists from the Parliament-Funkadelic camp or other popular Funk/R&B artists from the late ’70s and early ’80s. The G-Funk sound was something Dre had been developing for a few years, but it had reached its best form on The Chronic. By the time I made it to practice, I’d only made it through to “’G’ Thang.” Even though I hadn’t finished Side 1, I was aware that I was listening to something special. Once I headed back towards school for basketball practice, I knew that everyone was listening to the album’s intro, featuring Snoop Dogg talking exquisite trash for a couple of minutes. As I walked back to my car, cassette in hand, it seemed like Snoop’s voice talking over the “Funky Worm” keyboard sample was blasting out of every car. Maybe it was because I was closer to graduating, but unlike the previous spring, I didn’t wait until all of my exams were over to head down to Leopold’s in Berkeley to make my purchase. I went to buy The Chronic on a late Tuesday morning after a pair of midterm exams in the first semester of my senior year in high school. The pair recorded the title track for the Deep Cover soundtrack released in April 1992, and then began recording The Chronic. For his first post-N.W.A cut, Dre linked up with Calvin “ Snoop Doggy Dogg” Broadus, then a lanky youngster with a smooth, conversational flow. He linked up with the Marion “Suge” Knight and started laying the foundation for the Death Row enterprise. Dre spent a lot of time rhyming on N.W.A’s second album, Efil4zaggin (1991), but it was mostly out of necessity, as Ice Cube had left the group for numerous documented reasons.Īs 1991 drew to a close, Dre left the definitive gangsta rap group for ostensibly the same reasons that compelled Cube to bounce. While he was a genius of a beatmaker for N.W.A, he was the least gifted rapper in the group (Yes, he was worse than Eazy-E Eazy had a better voice and more charisma than Dre could ever manage). Dre would be hip-hop’s biggest superstar by the end of the year, I’d have thought you’d been smoking some really powerful shit. If you had told me in the beginning of 1992 that Dr. It turned Dre into the hottest producer on the planet, and made the label that released the album, Death Row Records, into one of popular culture’s most recognized brands. The album is certified triple platinum and its biggest single, “Nuthin' But a ‘G’ Thang,” is one of the most beloved singles of the ’90s. Dre” Young released his debut album 30 years ago, he changed the genre’s resonance going forward and defined the sound for an entire geographic region.
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