The Chronic

Dr. Dre - The Chronic

The Chronic

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CD Details

Artist: Dr. Dre
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Enhanced, Explicit Lyrics, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2001-05-22
Music Label: Death Row Koch
Soundtracks:

The Chronic (Intro)
Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')
Let Me Ride
The Day the Niggaz Took Over
Nuthin' But a "G" Thang
Deeez Nuuuts
Lil' Ghetto Boy
A Nigga Witta Gun
Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat
The $20 Sack Pyramid
Lyrical Gangbang
High Powered
The Doctor's Office
Stranded on Death Row
The Roach [The Chronic Outro]
Bitches Ain't Shit

Music reviews of The Chronic

Music Review: The album that unfortunately made gangsta rap palatable to the masses...
Rating: 3 Stars

When I first heard this album back in the 90's it sounded really "gangsta", but now, the lyrics mostly just sound like exaggerated parody. The first two tracks especially are absolutely hilarious :-). This album is OK and it can be pretty entertaining at times, but it honestly hasn't aged so well and it's not really the classic that it's often made out to be. I will say though that this album is highly effective in what it seems to set out to achieve because the gangsta vibe that's created makes it work really well as a single experience. Dre's production on The Chronic is said to be ingenious. There are a lot of great tracks on this album, but it's not Dre, but rather George Clinton and especially Bernie Worrell that deserve most of the credit for that. That squiggly high-pitched synth that you hear all over this album, and that became a key characteristic of "G-Funk" (which is largely little more than 70's funk samples with drum machines in the back and rappers talking gangsta "ish" over top of it), is Bernie Worrell's invention (first heard as far as I know on "Atmosphere" from Funkadelic's 1975 masterpiece, "Let's Take it to the Stage"). The same goes for those fuzzy synth bass lines. Dre jacks whole tracks--melody, harmony, and all--straight from Parliament/Funkadelic, (and a few from Donny Hathaway, and most famously, Leon Haywoods's "I Wanna Do Something Freaky to You" on "Nuthin' But a G Thing"). I've read several reviews where people actually think that "Let Me Ride" is an original beat--no wonder they think that Dre is a genius, that is the most unoriginal track on this album next to "The Roach" (listen to Parliament's "Mothership Connection (star child)" sometime and see for yourself). Yes its true that the results here are consistently entertaining for the most part on the first half of the album ("Nuthin' But a G Thing" is still one of the catchiest hits of the entire decade), and some of the best hip-hop albums that I've heard are full of similar types of sampling, but people need to be mindful of these things before they start talking about what a genius that Dre is. A few of the tracks where he doesn't completely borrow entire songs or ideas are still solid ("The Day the ... took over", "... witta Gun") but none of them are anywhere near as distinct (except perhaps "... witta Gun"). As a rapper Dre is far from phenomenal, but as one reviewer put it, he usually manages to "not embarrass himself" on the microphone. But the real lead vocal showcase comes from the then unknown "Snoop Doggy Dogg". Snoop has style for days, and I suspect that he's largely the reason that this album became so popular, but he's still not exactly an impressive lyricist. The first half of this album is solid all throughout, and the second half starts of promising with "... witta Gun", but this album goes into a long lull after that track, and doesn't recover until the standout posse cut, "Stranded on Death Row" (which samples the same Isaac Hayes song that EPMD sampled for their 1989 single "So Wat Cha Sayin'"). "The Roach" is just a SERIOUSLY inferior remake of "P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)" off of Parliament's "Mothership Connection" album, and it's the most irritating song on this album as far as I'm concerned. The similarly P-Funk obsessed Erick Sermon sampled the same song and did a much better job on Redman's debut "Whut? Thee Album". The Outro is basically a pretty average 5 note synth-riff tune embellished with some more squiggly Bernie Synth. Overall, the first half of this album truly is quite good. I would even grant that it alone really is almost as good as the album as a whole is often purported to be. But the second half only has two songs that are really worth listening to, and as a whole "The Chronic" does not measure up to the classic status that it is often afforded. Its popularity unfortunately sparked a competition between rappers to see who could sell more records by being more gangsta, and as far as I'm concerned, that wasn't a good thing. The Chronic unfortunately presented a reliably marketable formula for "type" and "image" that could be pretty easily duplicated, leading to a steady stream of sorry and easily predictable immitations ever since. I'm not at all opposed to hardcore street rap, I've heard many strong hardcore Rap albums (Black Moon's "Enta da Stage" comes to mind), it's just that it becomes boring when amything becomes so formulaic, obvious and predictable. To be fair, I actually give this album credit for greatly advancing the production quality for rap albums. Prior to "The Chronic", the quality of the production (not the quality of the material) on rap albums was largely inferior to that of other genres, and this album marked a pretty significant advance in that area. But, as a whole considering just the quality of the material here, this album is solid but seriously overrated. Only about half of the songs make it near the level of what you'd expect from the 5 star classic that this album is usually made out to be.

More The Chronic free music reviews:
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Description of The Chronic

Death Row Records. Digitally remastered and repackaged in jewel box in slipcase. Enhanced portion features the classic video Dre Day. 2001 reissue.

1989's Straight Outta Compton, by Dre's previous outfit N.W.A., may have shined the public spotlight on the genre, but The Chronic legitimized it. That is not to say that Snoop Doggy Dogg (The Chronic marks his debut) and Dre's raps are for everyone; the subject matter is the sex, drugs, violence, and politics of South Central Los Angeles, and the phrasing is explicit, to say the least. But The Chronic's real genius is the music. By breeding hip-hop, jazz (studio instrumentation includes saxophones and flutes), funk, and soul (sampled artists include Parliament, Donny Hathaway, and Isaac Hayes), Dre creates downright intoxicating grooves. If you can't feel The Chronic pulsating through your veins, maybe your heart's not pumping. --Bill Crandall

1989's Straight Outta Compton, by Dre's previous outfit N.W.A., may have shined the public spotlight on the genre, but The Chronic legitimized it. That is not to say that Snoop Doggy Dogg (The Chronic marks his debut) and Dre's raps are for everyone; the subject matter is the sex, drugs, violence, and politics of South Central Los Angeles, and the phrasing is explicit, to say the least. But The Chronic's real genius is the music. By breeding hip-hop, jazz (studio instrumentation includes saxophones and flutes), funk, and soul (sampled artists include Parliament, Donny Hathaway, and Isaac Hayes), Dre creates downright intoxicating grooves. If you can't feel The Chronic pulsating through your veins, maybe your heart's not pumping. --Bill Crandall

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