He doesn’t dazzle with his voice as much as the way in which he imbues Compton’s machismo with a sense of humanity.
He’s a predator one second and a callous raconteur the next (“Once upon a time, I shot a nigga on accident/ I tried to kill him but I guess I needed more practicing”). He’s far more calamitous on “Deep Water,” where he thrillingly flips through flows at breakneck speed. Lamar makes the most out of those last heartbeats in rhymes that read like a news ticker describing an urban dystopia, where boasts are quick detours from the fatalism (“I lie on the side of a one-way street/ Nowhere to go, death all I can see”). “Genocide,” the clearest highlight, places him within a bleak, descending riff and a bass line that mimics the final gasps of life before the flatline. Given the same stage, Kendrick Lamar manages to shine even brighter, scoring verses on three tracks. With Dre’s help, Snoop Doggy Dogg floated permanently into hip-hop consciousness 23 years ago.
(Read: Straight Outta Compton and the New Musical Biopic) On “Medicine Man”, Eminem’s technical prowess actually dazzles for the first time in a while, his verse only dented by backhanded misogyny. Dre gets Snoop on a rock rap track (“One Shot One Kill”) and gets him to sound more menacing than he has in a while. Game finally snaps out of his late-career creative purgatory in “Just Another Day”, in which survival is a fortune not a privilege (“Slugs drippin’ with Hennessy, got murderous tendencies”). The guests find something to tap into here, bringing out top-notch performances around the board. The soundscape is distinctive, but the album wouldn’t quite work if Dre ran through it solo. Oxygen-pilfering percussive sprints (“Loose Cannon”) flow into Turkish bacchanalia (“Issues”), and final hour bangers (“Deep Water”) sync with sess-blowing, money-counting blues (“For The Love Of Money”). Bass-driven fiestas and concrete maimings are vivid within this eco-system. If the sound stands in for the city, Dre’s version is a place where its celebratory chest-beating is a hairpin turn away from its fangs. Lamar’s messianic messaging, convoluted at some points, is replaced with a soundscape that’s imbued with extra vitality and urgency. You can even argue that the student informed the teacher while the first two Dre albums play out like an assorted mix, Compton’s 16 tracks ebb into each other cohesively. What makes this one momentous is the way it balances three objectives with impressive aplomb: constructing a love letter to his hometown, making an album that’s more of an endnote than a suffix, and continuing a lineage that has supplanted itself within hip-hop’s DNA.Ĭompton’s cinematic scope puts it in the same league as Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Dre’s, but newcomer King Mez, it’s clear Compton is bigger than one prodigious producer - just like his other two studio albums. But as the news synopsis kicks in and the first vocals you hear are not Dr. The man kicks it off with a rough approximation of the Tri-Star logo theme. If “I Need A Doctor” and “Kush” were too indulgent, Dre’s final album starts off with what looks like the same trappings. Dre, who’s likely to resume life as a recluse after the ongoing press run. Would Detox truly have sucked? No one knows except Dr. Dre’s failings post- 2001 weren’t as ignominious. The Aftermath had to fail before the next episode finally came and Eminem was unleashed. Dre was clinging to relevance.īut N.W.A had to break before transmuting P-Funk into lowrider-friendly G-funk on The Chronic.
Yet, for some reason, we were getting awkward attempts at bangers, as if Dr. Dre’s legacy has been secured long before Eminem rolled through in a Benz looking hotter than a set of twin babies. The songs weren’t just underwhelming: They painted a weird portrait. The Eminem-featuring “I Need A Doctor” was more moribund than anthemic. “Kush” was a percussive club effort that was ephemeral at best. The two we heard inspired little confidence. Dre revealed that he had between 20 to 40 songs for that project.
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