Dr. Dre
The Chronic

When a genre becomes a trend, the market sees the arrival of millions of insubstantial CDs that casual listeners buy at shopping malls, leaving plenty of euros in the pockets of self-proclaimed artists incapable of any communicative effort. By purchasing this album by Dr. Dre, you're unlikely to regret the money spent.

With his unmistakable style, G-Funk (a highly personalized reworking of the funky-groove derived from George Clinton and The Parliament), Dre has revolutionized the West Coast sound, establishing himself as one of the best producers in the Hip-Hop field. A founding father of the hardcore group N.W.A. along with Ice Cube and Eazy-E, and of Suge Knight's Death Row Records, Dr. Dre is an MC of limited skills; his rhyming is simple, broken, slow, but his great talent as a producer allows the creation of a perfect album from every point of view: provocative, violent, and misogynistic lyrics, comedic interludes, and catchy melodies represent the perfect mold for a successful Hip-Hop album. Dre is aware of his limits in front of the microphone, thus leaving it in the hands of an almost omnipresent Snoop Doggy Dogg, who either flows with his rhymes over the beats or reinforces the choruses, thus perfecting every track with his irresistible flow.

In an album without dips (though perhaps the first part is better), I particularly highlight five songs to listen to and re-listen to: "Fuck wit Dre Day (and everybody’s celebrating)", "Let me Ride", "Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang", "Deeez Nuuutz" (the intro is hilarious, though I can't quite follow the dialogue, it seems to be a sort of prank call!) and "Lil’ Ghetto Boy".

If I really have to find a flaw in Dr. Dre's production, I'd say it's his excessive use of certain loops or patches (take some of his bass lines: he tends to recycle them in multiple tracks, if you listen to Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle, it's easy to recognize one in "Who Am I"), risking giving the tracks a somewhat déjà vu feel. However, it must be said that hip-hop is the art of recycling, of obsessive (and repetitive) sampling, and in this, Dr. Dre is a true master.