The closing track of Dre’s 2015 album Compton sounded remarkably like Dre bidding farewell to his career as a rapper. In Da Club is as about as bleak and omnious-sounding a party-starting banger as it is possible to imagine. That said, 50 Cent sold millions, and at their best his collaborations with Dre have a creepy power.
50 Cent – In Da Club (2003)Īfter the dazzling invention and technical brilliance of Eminem, Dre’s next superstar protege was a backwards step, with tired gangsta cliches exploiting a lurid backstory. He is effortlessly out-rapped by Eminem – whose spectacular guest appearance was later lauded by Kendrick Lamar as the best verse on Dre’s album 2001 – but the producer’s bullish recounting of his achievements is lent weight by how good the music is: the perfect expression of 2001’s chilly, bare post-G-funk sound. But Fast Lane is amazing: the Curtis Mayfield-esque vocal and lush harmonies crashing against a sinister Dre beat, decorated with an eerie, shimmering organ and crawling analogue synth. In the aftermath of Eminem’s vast success, Bilal made for an unlikely Dr Dre collaborator: a “conscious” neo-soul artist, affiliated to Questlove’s Soulquarians collective. He also paid homage to funk pioneer Roger Troutman, whose talk box provides the hook. Like Blackstreet’s No Diggity, which Dre worked on incognito, California Love is powered by a piano riff – this one sampled from Joe Cocker’s 1972 track Woman to Woman. In 1996 Dre wisely fled Death Row, a label about to go horrifyingly out of control, but not before producing one final anthem. How We Do’s success rests on Dre’s spare, gripping production: a spindly hook endlessly repeated over old-school 808 beats.
There was a marked decline in the quality of MCs Dre worked with in the early 00s: 50 Cent wasn’t anything like as talented as Eminem, and the Game wasn’t anything like as talented as 50 Cent. Express Yourself’s use of the bouncy Charles Wright original was a masterstroke, both commercially minded and at odds with NWA’s relentlessly grim subject matter: even the relatively benign lyrics here are filled with violence. NWA – Express Yourself (1988)ĭre’s handful of mid-80s productions for the World Class Wreckin Cru showed promise, but NWA’s Straight Outta Compton was something else. (from left) DJ Yella, MC Ren, Eazy-E and Dr Dre in 1991.
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