Higher Education: The Myth Of Andre Young.

I don't write for shock value these days, making wild claims such as "well, you know...the Beatles just were not a good band" or, "Yeah, Starship was better than Jefferson Airplane", or lastly, "You know, those Nickelback guys just don't get enough credit...", I try to keep my points of view as purist and realistic as possible in regards to the music I take in, and the musical opinions I put out for others. I say that disclaimer, just so the following sentence isn't seen as some Lester Bangs type rhetoric (Bangs my be my hero of the printed word, but there's no way Metal Machine Music is one of the greatest albums of all time. I digress.)....here goes, hip hop fans.

Dr. Dre might be overrated. Just a touch. Or, a bunch. Or, completely. And off we go...

First, let me say that there are two cases in which the good Doctor is more than all he's cracked up to be. If you can get your hands on any of his World Class Wrecking Cru stuff, it's fun, and "Turn Off The Lights" is the point where you can get a feel that Dre knows what he's doing, but it's not GREAT, despite what folks will now try to put across. N.W.A. was great. N.W.A. speaks for itself. He built a wall of sound around his group, which included Ice Cube, for my money one of the greatest MC's ever, that defined their sound. It was confrontational, it was loud, it was effective. Their first two records set the framework for what west coast music would sound like for years to come. And the production he lent to D.O.C.'s first album, No One Can Do It Better, is equally as pivotal and important. And a quick aside, D.O.C. should have been Snoop. More on Snoop later, but D.O.C. was a better MC, with better lyrics, a better voice (yes....better voice), and a better delivery than Snoop. An auto accident damaged his vocal chords shortly after his debut album, and he was reduced to ghostwriting for Dre in the coming years.

I wasn't even 10 when The Chronic came out. It is a musical masterpiece that deserves every bit of credit, and more. I remember my brother got the cassette tape, and I used to sneak it and listen to it all the way through. I think the mastery of the Chronic is that it's not a short album. There's about 17 tracks, which leave a lot of room for error, but I'm not sure that ANY of the tracks come out sounding too bad. Lyrically, I could take or leave it, as I thought that some of the picking at (Ruthless records music head) Jerry Heller, as well as Eazy E was a bit petty for Dre's taste, but here we get our first taste of Snoop Doggy Dogg, who was featured in some capacity on every track. Snoop's voice, lazy, relaxed, and smooth almost fits to Dre's production style seamlessly. And at just 20, he was a young representative of a new breed of west coast MC, since Ice Cube had, since N.W.A., jumped ship, and jumped coasts to work with Public Enemy's production team, The Bomb Squad. Snoop was the West's savior, and gave them a legitimate MC, before he even released an album.

And the production! Dre made it popular....you sample George Clinton. Why? because George Clinton doesn't care. You can sample George Clinton for 15 tracks, and maybe only have to break him off....say...20, 25 thousand? And good old George went the extra mile for Dre, reportedly sending him the original recordings of the records that he was asking to sample. Who does that now?? even then, sampling was a fight. So really, George Clinton might deserve more credit for revolutionizing sampling than Dre, but that's moderately besides the point. Another thing Dre did was establish live instruments, and live backing vocals over the use of his samples. Kanye West has since mastered this art, so it's no longer seen as fresh, and/or new....but Dre's set that groundwork. It's almost like a wall of sound; the bottom register is usually the sample fleshed out by some synth bass lines, while the top end is the high whistle of a flute, piano, or vocal. And in between holds the sparse guitars, or chunky drums...it's a direct derivative of Phil Spector, but in a more urban, much more sparse sense. The best thing about The Chronic is that it's revered by both coasts. East Coast MC's are admittedly a bit snobbish. They feel as though they created the art, so they have final say. But the Chronic not only gave credibility to our friends on the left coast, but really created a healthy respect that held for at least 3 or so years.

Enough of the good.

The problem remains that since 1992's Chronic....Dre has been spotty at best, and his debut album is often used as an excuse, or reason to ignore this. Yes, he produced Snoop's 1993 debut Doggystyle, which raked in some acclaim...but did anyone REALLY listen to that record? I mean, seriously, I've talked to people who claim Doggystyle is fantastic, but can't name one track off of it. Don't get me wrong, it's decent, but the acclaim it's gotten? merely, and I would challenge anyone on this, a circumstance of people at the time salivating for an album from the kid that lit up The Chronic. Snoop's performance on Dre's album was energetically relaxed, his performance on Doggystyle was forced, almost as though he was attempting to live up to his hype. I will credit Dre for switching up his production style, and not hammering us to death with G-Funk samples any longer, and he switched to leaner, more effective sounds with Curtis Mayfield, and Issac Hayes jumping on the "I want to be sampled by Dre!!" bandwagon. But, it comes out a bit of a mess. The wall of sound becomes a pile of rubble a bit in some spaces, almost as though you can see Dre in the studio trying to cram as many instruments into a single bar as possible. Still, if you want to give Dre Doggystyle, I can give him that as well. Moving on.

How quickly do we forget the two biggest disasters of Dre's career? First off, 1996's "Dre Dre Presents The Aftermath" after his departure from Death Row Records, was poor at best. At worst, there's about two great songs on it, and the rest is unlistenable. This was a legit Dr. Dre failure, that often gets brushed off as, "Oh, well...he's just putting out stuff to test the waters for the next Chronic". It was hastily produced, poorly engineered, thanks Jimmy Iovine, and the guest spots were minimal, leaving Dre to his own devices, and like most studio rats...he's a pretty terrible vocalist. But Dre didn't run and hide, which I respect. He latched on to east coast supergroup The Firm (Consisting of Nas, Cormega, AZ, and Foxy Brown...how could this fail???), and produced their 1997 self titled debut on his label. The confusion here is simply, how? you have 2 of the greatest MC's the east had to offer in AZ and Nas, and Cormega is no slouch. Foxy Brown.....well, she was there, and God bless her, she tried. This album wasn't as bad as Aftermath, but it was never what it should have been, and I'll be the first to admit that supergroup ideas are flawed no matter the genre, especially in rap, where the egos run high. There were bright spots, but overall, the album only went gold because Dre and Nas' names were attached, and fans hated it. I mean, by the time the 2nd Chronic album dropped, 1999' s 2001, people had become so disillusioned by Dre's greatness that nothing else mattered. And 2001 is a solid record. Lyrically, it was better than the first Chronic, but it should have been, as this time around he enlisted the skills of a second discovery, a skinny white kid from Detroit, Eminem. Plus he had Snoop, Xzibit, and Kurupt....he had the help of much better MC's, which covered up for the flaws in production. Some of the beats, such as "XXXplosive" and "Forgot About Dre", have to go down as some of the better beats anyone has ever heard. They are intricate, useful, and just all together mind blowing. Others are dry, plodding, and by the end of the album, you might feel like sighing as you say "well, this is getting old".

So, now, here we sit....with Dre's final effort, 2002's Detox. Or, wait....was it 2004's?? oh, no.....
that's right, how silly of me...it's not even out yet. Dre has been Sooooo busy living off of his 1.5 great album legacy. Granted, he did discover, and guide the career of Eminem, which actually just went up in flames with the release of the horrific long awaited Relapse earlier this month (In which Dre's hit-or-miss production was widely criticized....finally....). But has he done anything REALLY memorable and worthwhile since 1994 or so? A song here and there, yes, but anything sustained? I've gotten so tired of the Detox talk, that it's become like Chinese Democracy, but worse for me. Worse because, at least with that, I knew Axl Rose was fucking insane. So, it was never a shock. I'm sure Axl thought he was recording the album for like 2 years when in actuality he was likely just getting his hair done. Dude is that crazy. Dre is a pretty sane, level-headed guy. A sane, level-headed guy that has been making an album. For the past decade or so. Dre, my man....scratch Detox. Do it, because if it ever comes out, it had better be The Chronic on HGH, or whatever has Major League Baseball all fucked up, or else it won't register. The problem with Detox? well, good old Dre just keeps giving away beats, and ghost producing. Sometimes, yielding great results (the latest is T.I.'s "Coming Back"), but since when do you hold out on a project to....ghost produce??? Even his closest collaborators are confused. Eminem, just last week announced that Detox is "Anywhere between 50% and 85% finished" oh, ummm.....thanks for the update, Marsh. 50 Cent, at one point said that he had recorded 3 finished songs for the album, and then a few months later, said he was unsure if he would be on it at all, and may possibly be booted in favor of Ice Cube (No complaints here.), it's become an industry myth, and I've got a lot of bets to live up to if it ever comes out. If I had a nickel for every time I've said, "I'll do (fill in embarrassing act, or absurd sexual act here) if Detox ever comes out", well....I'd have some nickels.

The biggest issue is, Dre's flaws are so obvious, yet so ignored. I read a piece in Time on Dre, and he's painted as this God-like figure in the studio, they discussed how (respected bassist, and Rilo Kiley producer) Mike Elizondo was confused on a bass part, and a frustrated Dre sung the part pitch perfect, and doves flew around the studio, as Elizondo was enlightened, and the bass simply played itself, through the glory of Dre. Partially true, but you get the idea. Words used to describe Dre's production are often "cinematic", or "hauntingly brilliant"....and I'm just not so sure. You watch him in the studio, and he definitely, without doubt, knows his shit. What he doesn't know, and possibly has never known, is when to tone down his sound, and in turn, let go of his creations. You know why the Chronic was amazing? because it was Dre with no pressure, not trying to impress anyone. Now that he has to live up to what he's become, he seems increasingly perfectionistic, to the point of pulling finished beats from artists and scrapping them. Dre's style has only proven to be effective on the west coast, and in Detroit. That's it. Which, to be honest, is why he has been surpassed by his peers. His Firm failure showed nothing if not the fact that he can't, I mean literally CANNOT produce tracks for east coast MC's. He couldn't hash out ANYTHING effective for Rakim, who is possibly the greatest MC of all time. The lack of a pure, dominant West Coast MC from about.....2000 until about Game in 2005, hurt Dre's sound severely. And Game worshipped the ground that Dre walked on, name dropped him in almost every song he could.. And Game is a great, GREAT west coast rapper. He is what Snoop wishes he was. And Dre contributed great work to his debut album, 2005's The Documentary, and when it was announced that 2007's Doctor's Advocate (I mean, come on...how much more of a man crush could Game have on Dre? Though, I hope he doesn't read this, and come and find me.) would be an entirely Dre produced album, The entire state of California pretty much wet itself. For years, the West had been fighting for hip hop respect, and this was to be the album that did it for good. Chronic 2007. Take that, Brooklyn. Dre, after crafting some beats for the project, inexplicably dropped out. Doctor's Advocate, without Dre, was a critical and commercial success, as Kanye West and Just Blaze picked up the production slack. The problem is becoming that the IDEA of a Dre production is amazing, but it's rarely realized, so that these grand ideas are being taken and run with in people's minds, and we're forgetting that he's actually producing very little these days. He's talked about producing a lot....but hasn't really put forth much.

See, here's the thing. Dre has done some good for music. He's by all accounts a humble, and nice guy, despite the fact that he is perceived as he is. He was one of the very few people to ever stand up to Suge Knight, and leave Death Row when it got too violent, too corrupt, and too uninspiring for his tastes, and I respect that. I only wish he could have gotten Tupac out with him, but I respect the fact that he left, and turned his back on literally MILLIONS of dollars to follow what he wanted to do, and the music he wanted to make. I'm just not sure about much else. Rolling Stone ranks him as the 54th greatest artist of all time (he appears again, with N.W.A. at 88. Again, no complaints on that one). No, seriously, they do. In his immortals write-up/lovefest, Kanye West states: "Do hip-hop producers hold Dr. Dre in high esteem? It's like asking a Christian if he believes Christ died for his sins." Now, West's flair for drama aside, this can't be fucking serious. West asked Dre to mix his second album, Late Registration, which again led to much excitement, but never came to be, as Jon Brion handled the duties, quite well. Dre has been surpassed by producers who do more with less. Why spend millions to make one beat? The Neptunes just need a drum machine. Kanye West and Just Blaze might spend a ton on sample clearances, sure, but they don't need a complete orchestra and southern Baptist choir to get the job done. Give Timbaland a keyboard and a drum machine, and welcome to the top 10. Billboard is happy to see you. All of these are Dre disciples, who have passed him up, which is hard to do when bowing at someone's feet. It's almost as though he SHOULD be relevant only through "remember those days" talk, but you would think that he's still working at a high level. Dre has become his own worst enemy. Maybe caring about what people think too much, maybe, at 44, feeling the effects of his age, and looking over his shoulder at his younger peers. But what I hope that at some point he understands, is that he's at his best when he's not trying to live up to the legend that people have made him out to be. He is a great producer. Who is very flawed, and he's been painted as this black Phil Spector, a flawless king Midas. When, in reality, Dre's had scratches in his armor since around 1995. Maybe he's accepted it, maybe he hasn't, but either way...why can't we?

On, and if Detox ever comes out and lives up to expectations, I swear I'll........

Well, I'll leave it up to you. It's like a choose your own disaster.