60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Dr. Dre—“Nuthin’ But a G-Thang”

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

Rob explores legendary producer Dr. Dre’s iconic debut album ‘The Chronic’ and its lead single, “Nuthin’ But a G-Thang,” by discussing Dre’s extraordinary chemistry with other rappers, his towering influence on West Coast gangsta rap, and his dark history of violence against women. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Sheldon Pearce Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments play together only on Spotify. Best of all, you can create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm-fm-f-M-C-H-O-R-F-M-U-S-I-S-I-S-M-U-S-I-S-E-L-K. A lot of spelling there, but just do it. All I really want to know, is how these two guys mix up these six words.

It's like this and that uh, and turn them into the most profound, the most triumphant, the most harmonious, the most staggeringly beautiful 10 seconds of recorded sound imaginable. How did they do this? How did they do this?

How can you do this too? You can't. Let's not try. I will not attempt to do this. The last thing the world needs is another white guy ineptly rapping along to this. Hello. I'm Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s.

And that, of course, was Dr. Dre. And his young protege, Snoop Doggy Dog, changing the world. The song is nothing but a G-thing. Monumental lead single from The Chronic, Dr. Dre's solo debut, released in December 1992 on death row records. This is not information you require. One can divide the history of West Coast rap music, if not global rap music, if not the history of recorded sound, if not the overarching history of Western civilization into BC, before chronic, and AD after Dre. There is entirely too much to talk about here. It is overwhelming. I am overwhelmed. I have to talk

about NWA and EZE and Shug Knight and Jimmy Iovine and Rodney King and D. Barnes. I have to talk about gangster rap and the L.A. riots and the way MTV and CNN, respectively, conspire to flood, to invade the American suburbs nationwide with the world-altering disharmony that fueled gangster rap and the L.A. riots. I have to talk about Leon Haywood and Parliament Funkadelic and the Moog and G-Funk and the solid-state logic mixing board, Dr. Drey, once described as the first love of my life. I have to talk about weed, or at least I have to talk about Snoop and Dre talking about weed. I also have to talk about the DOC, a rapper and songwriter from Dallas who made his way out to Los Angeles. He's a crucial figure in the Dr. Drey

extended universe. He co-founded Death Row Records and was poised for solo superstardom himself before his larynx and voice box were crushed in a 1989 car accident. He survived. His voice survived. It's just now his voice was harsh and growly and far less harmonious and no longer suited to solo superstardom. He settled for being a superstar ghostwriter. I have to talk about the DOC because Snoop has no problem telling anybody that it's

like this and like that and like this and was the DOC's line. I tried to say the line without rapping it. It's overwhelming. I am overwhelmed. I don't want to talk about a lot of the things I have to talk about. So forgive me for reveling for a quick second in the simplest pleasures of nothing but a G thing. The spelling, for example. We need a whole album of Snoop Dogg just spelling things.

Never in your life have you heard such dazzling, such exquisite spelling. It's the capital S.O.G. Y, D O'DO.G. Y, D O'Double G.C. You see. Forgive me for reveling for a second in this simple harmony generated by these two people. There is so much hatred, so much abuse, so much violence, so much destruction, so much death in this extended universe, both BC and AD. So this song is an ocean of calm for me, or at least an island of calm within an ocean of relentless calamity.

It's the somehow peaceful intersection of 12 overlapping natural and societal and personal disasters, and it's just Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dog talking to each other, enjoying one another's company with a chemistry so pure, it's theology. You're lucky if you ever have chemistry half this palpable with one other person in your whole entire life. But for all the violence and chaos surrounding Dr. Dre before and after this moment, and all the violence and chaos he'd perpetrate himself, he had chemistry this palpable, this salable to the tune of roughly a billion dollars, with like half a dozen super famous people, the first of whom was EZE.

Dr. Dre was born Andre Romel Young in the city of Compton, south of downtown Los Angeles, in 1965. He got his first set of turntables at 17 after hearing the adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the wheels of steel. He did a little dancing. Don't ask him about it. In the mid-80s, as a DJ and producer and rapper, he joined an electro-rap group called the World Class Reckon Crew, a heavy prince vibe to this group, sonically, visually. Fashion-wise, maybe don't ask him about this either. Get famous enough, and the first thing you ever got at all famous for automatically becomes infamous and is forever gleefully weaponized against you

by your friends and enemies alike and your friends turned enemies especially. It was a very popular style at the time. I'm Dray, gorgeous hunk of a man, doing tricks on the mix that no others can. Anyway, NWA, right? Gangster rap group, only the fifth rap group to ever make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

fuck the police and so forth. NWA didn't quite invent gangster rap per se. Shout out School E.D. Shout out Ice T. Shout out the song Batteram by a rapper named Toddy Tee. The batteram was a much-loat-grade weapon, basically a tank, often employed

by the Los Angeles Police Department, to knock doors down, to functionally knock houses down, etc. But NWA perfected gangster rap before the majority of the world had even heard of gangster rap before the squeamish politicians most offended by this music started denouncing it using the term gangster rap and w a's own ice cube for one prefer the term reality rap the group's classic lineup the guys looking down at you in

the cover of their mythic 1988 debut album straight out of compton consisted of dray his world class wrecking crew pal DJ Yela and arabian prince and then more on the rapping side M.C. W.E., Ice Cube, and EZE. If we give NWA, their full due will be here all day. What's important for our purposes is the myth that has accrued around NWA and the myth of Dr. Dre within NWA. I don't mean myth is in falsehood. Think of these as Bible stories, as tales etched on the very pillars of Western civilization. They're almost certainly exaggerated, but that doesn't make them not true. In 2015, F. Gary Gray directed in NWA bio, pick called, of course, straight out of Compton. It made $200 million worldwide. Ice Cube's son

played Ice Cube. Arabian Prince ain't in it at all. The EZE-affiliated female rap group J.J. Fad ain't in it at all. Supersonic is arguably the best song from this whole era. Myth-making is a messy business. Corey Hawkins plays Dr. Dre, who was introduced as this sort of beatific, almost godlike oracle of pure musical delight. He's lying on the floor. There's classic vinyl fanned out around his head like he's in a Roman fresco sunlight streaming in, the camera lens is flaring, he's picking out in the air the piano line to everybody loves the sunshine by Roy Ayers, a 70s jazz funk classic, Dre would one day sample for a throwaway never officially released song called My Life, a throwaway for him. For other rappers and producers,

that it'd be a career highlight. In 2017, Alan Hughes directed a four-part HBO documentary called The Defiant Ones, which profiled both Drey and his business partner, Jimmy Iovine, the Brooklyn producer and music biz giant who helped Drey, as the series begins, maybe become a billionaire. Turns out those two guys had economic chemistry. But again, the imagery is we're first getting to know the real Dr. Drey is pristine vintage stereo equipment, records spinning on turntables, needles dropping, mixers, reverent.

rows of knobs, giant stacks of mixed cassettes. Pretty soon he will show us the SSL-4,000 board that he partially used to make the chronic, and that was, indeed, the first love of his life. We are beyond studio porn here. This is like a romance novel. This is the greatest love story ever told. Whether it's a documentary or a fictional portrayal of Dr. Dre, we're encouraged to think of him less as a flawed human than as an immaculate machine, a found of pure immaculate sound. A guy who never leaves the studio and has, in essence, become the studio, who has become his own luxury gear. A big part of why he might be a billionaire's little company he started with Iveen called Beats by Dre headphones. We know a great deal about Dr. Dre, the person.

His tragedies, his flaws, his fuck-ups. But the main thing we know is that he wishes we didn't know anything, really. You get the feeling he'd like to be thought of as a sentient mixing board. It maybe be better for everyone if that's what he was. Early NWA production-wise is not a billion miles away from what Drey was doing with the world-class reckon crew. But there's a newfound heaviness to it, a sample-heavy chaos to it, that echoes public enemies production crew, the bomb squad, but is pulling that chaos toward the west coast. Toward a sinister electromagnolism that's more and more starting to sound maximalist. So NWA's breakout hit, of course, is Boys in the Hood.

Dr. Drey primarily produced it. Ice Cube wrote the lyrics. and, primarily at Dre's urging, EZE wrapped it. EZE was born Eric Wright. He was the guy with the money, with pretty explicitly, the drug money. He was the guy with the most street credibility. He was the reality rap godfather living the harshest reality. He was the guy who started NWA's label, Ruthless Records,

with a much shadier music bizlifer named Jerry Heller. And EZE was not, when NWA first formed, a rapper, at all. Dr. Dre made him a rapper. Dr. Dre patiently molded him right there in the studio, right there in the booth, line by line, word by word, syllable by syllable, beat by beat into a superstar rapper. That's the myth, anyway. And this mythic origin story is so prevalent that you can hear, forget the beat, right there in EasyE's voice, you can hear Dre's sublime chemistry with this person, and Dre's own burgeoning genius. And Dre's origin story is arguably the single, go-greatest record producer of all time, doing tricks on the mix that nobody else can. Pretend that easy is pissed off at Dre here, and that Dre is pissing him off on purpose. NWA is both beloved and reviled, reviled primarily by the police on account of the straight out of Compton hit, fuck the police. NWA is also in shambles. Ice Cube leaves first. over money, over basically the continued existence of Jerry Heller.

Straight out of Compton, the movie is nearly three hours long, a lot of pool parties. In the director's cut, there's a scene where Jerry offers EZE a plate of Kung Pow chicken, and Easy rudely declines. It's the whole scene. Not every scene in the Bible pushes the plot forward. Anyway, Cube immediately launches a blockbuster solo career with 1990s America's Most Wanted, 3K is in America. NWA's second album comes out in 1991. with a title white fans can only say backwards. It debuts at number one on the Billboard album chart,

and this is Cube, referring to him as Benedict Arnold. Cube responds. And a song called No Vaseline. Do not antagonize Ice Cube. That's my advice. Now Dr. Dre wants out too, over money and over power, over control. Dre has increasingly no control. He is still mourning his little brother, Tyree, who died in 19, 1989, after his neck was broken during a fight. Drey is a father himself. He's been in jail. He's had plenty of run-ins with the law himself. In January, 1991, at a record-release party in L.A., Dr. D. D. D. D. Routally assaults, Routally assaults, who'd interviewed Ice Cube as part of a story about his feud with NWA. Barnes files assault charges. D. D. Brees pleads no contest, but avoids jail time, and a civil suit. D. D. Barnes does not come up. at all in straight out of Compton, the biopic, though the real Dre does address the incident at length in the defiant ones, the documentary. I fucked up. I paid for it. I'm sorry for it. I apologize for it. I have this dark cloud that follows me, and it's going to be attached to me forever.

D. Barnes is Dr. Dre's legacy every bit as much as any record he'll ever make, any musical genre he'll help invent, any company he'll ever start. Any company he'll ever cell. She is not, by a long shot, the only woman to accuse Dr. Dre of abuse. The very day the chronic came out on December 15, 1992, an LA Times headline observed that Dre is no stranger to the inside of a courtroom. In an article reeling off the list of his open court cases, the D. Barn's suit included. Drey has quoted as saying, 1992 was not my year. I'm recording this in January 2021, Andrei is reportedly recovering from an aneurysm, but he is also in the midst of a divorce from his wife of 20-plus years, Nicole Young, who now says that during their marriage,

he repeatedly assaulted her, held a gun to her head on two separate occasions. I am telling you this now, or reminding you of all this now, because there's no question I have to tell you this, and to my mind, the only thing worse than saying it now is saying it later. I am about to praise his music and the chronic specifically at some length. And I'd rather talk about D. Barnes before than after. There are no good answers here. There is no comfort here. But it's important for me to say that before Dr. Drey's solo career even starts, before he truly becomes a pop star, an icon, a mogul, an all-genre, all-timer, there are already terrible, undeniable elements of his history to contend with. He is one of the most harrowing how to separate the art from the artist's conundrums,

in music history, and part of that equation is the excellence and the ubiquity of his art. So you're left with the impossible choice of weighing the reality against the reality rap. To make this dilemma even harder on you, as of 1992, Dr. Dre's reality rap now sounds this magnificent. What all the nigger saying? I will love, let me ride until I die. It will hurt just a little to love let me ride until I die. In 1992, Dr. Dre can often be found recording in his mansion in Calabasas, which famously has no furniture other than maybe a bed, and of course all that sanctified recording gear.

Dre has left EasyE's Ruthless Records and joined Death Row Records, led by co-founder and CEO Shug Knight, formerly Bobby Brown's bodyguard, formerly an NFL replacement player for the Los Angeles Rams during the 1987 player strike. So, a guy, willing to antagonize professional football players. Also, a guy who allegedly dangled vanilla ice over a hotel balcony during, you know, royalty negotiations. Shug Knight facilitated Dr. Dr. Dre's contractual release from ruthless records, which is legalese for saying that, allegedly, Shug Knight either beat up EZE, that's in the movie, or threaten to kill EZE, or threaten to kill EZE's mother or possibly all of the above. There are parts of the chronic,

So absurdly gorgeous that not one shred of this violence, this ugliness, this darkness is audible. There are parts of the chronic, including the intro, the whole first two minutes, where the ugliness is the whole entire point. P.S. Fuck Mr. Warkin Tattoo, aka Jerry and Easy, sincerely yours, these motherfucking news. That's a fantasy island reference, not the Deez Nuts part, the other part. The chronic intro is a showcase for this album's two most important instruments, which are, in no particular order, the Moog synthesizer and Snoop Doggy Dog's voice. The Moog, of course, is the high-pitched whistle that winds all through the album, or at least the pop-yest parts of the album. It's alarmingly melodious. It's always struck me as just crushingly beautiful, but there's a taunting swagger to it.

It sounds like a mosquito hijacked one of those LAPD batterams. As for Snoop, he's 19 years old at this point, Max. Born Calvin Brodus Jr. in Long Beach, he's in a Long Beach supergroup in retrospect called 213 with his cousin Nate Dog and their friend Warren G. The tape finds its way to Dre and immediately Dre's found his next superstar to patiently mold, line by line, beat by beat. The DOC is there to help also, but Snoop, I don't think, took as much work. That's from Fuck With Dre Day. the Chronic's second monumental single, and clearly Snoop's in a world historical, anything sounds cool if he says it, situation.

In 1993, when Snoop and Dre are glowering from the cover of Rolling Stone, in that cover story, Dre will put it simply, quote, I can take anybody who reads this magazine and make a hit record on him. You don't have to rap. You can do anything. You can go into this studio and talk. I can take a fucking three-year-old and make a hit record on him. God has blessed me with this gift.

Not just any three-year-old, theoretically. It's not that Dre doesn't have a type. Easy E and Snoop are already helping sketch out Dr. Dre's platonic ideal of a superstar rapper of a leading man. A nasal voice helps. Even relative to other rappers, a brashness, a wildness, an audible audacity helps. This person has to sound dangerous. And whatever you call, the music some people call gangster rap, a huge, part of this music appeal is the razor-thin line between sounding dangerous and actually being dangerous.

Drake could swear up and down that his music was entertainment. Think of it like a movie, a blockbuster. But Snoop's job, and this applies to every rapper on The Chronic, was to make the danger and the enmity and the imminent catastrophe feel real, even when it wasn't, and it rarely wasn't. I keep forgetting to mention that while the chronic is being recorded, Los Angeles is literally on fire. That's Daz Dillinger on track four, also Snoop's cousin. On March 3rd, 1991, four LAPD officers viciously beat a black man named Rodney King. It was videotaped, and all four cops were brought up on charges of excessive force. On April 29, 1992, the verdicts were announced. All four were acquitted.

Over the next three days and nights, the final tally for the L.A. riots will be 58 deaths, nearly 2,400 injuries, more than 11,000 arrests, more than 1,000 fires reported throughout Los Angeles County, and $1 billion in total damages. Drey would later complain, in the Defiant Ones, about the looting, or at least the looters who brought all their shit back to his studio and stashed it in his vocal booth, whereas Snoop would helpfully clarify that, of course, he went out looting. That's what made them such a great team. The chronic, the solo debut of the primary.

sonic architect behind the song Fuck the Police was born in the crucible of one of the most violent and upsetting popular uprisings in American history and arguably one of the most necessary because reality rap, harsh as it could be, was no match for the harshness

of reality. What Dr. Dre invented on the chronic had a name everyone could agree on, G-funk, slower, sultrier, even sweeter, with an accessibility, yes, even a cross-over-ready suburban accessibility that only ratcheted up the menace. Samples and interpolation savvy rap fans would easily recognize Parliament Funkadelic, James Brown,

the Ohio players. Nothing but a G-thing is built around funk singer Leon Haywood's 1975 hit. I want to do something freaky to you. But now the low end hits harder, and the Moog helps the melody hit harder. He wanted live instrumentation because he wasn't satisfied with a collage, with the whole dusty crate-digger routine. Rap music for sub-wifers, rap music for low-riders, rap music, finally, in its totality, for and by the West Coast.

Rap music so radiant and seething and undeniable that even Dr. Dre himself, by his own admission, not a viable best rapper alive candidate, sounds 900 feet tall. Pretend that Dr. Dre is pissed at the whole entire world here because he definitely is. Who can rap and control the maestro.

At the same time with the dope rhyme that I kicked, you know and I know I'll phone some old funky shit. Drey, in fact, has always said explicitly that he doesn't really like his voice as a rapper. He wants to be a producer. He'd rather direct the artist than be the artist. He'll give up the spotlight if you let him control the spotlight. Control is all he ever wanted. The chronic's hardest moments for me are small masterpieces of set and sound design.

like the many tornadoes that swirl around the Donnie Hathaway sample on Lil Ghetto Boy. You can hear Drake clearly even when you can't hear his voice at all. In classic Dr. Dre fashion, The Chronic for a solo album, is remarkably close to an ensemble album. Snoop, Daz, Corrupt, R.BX, The Lady of Rage, Bushwick Bill. But be honest, even a fucking three-year-old would sound incredible over the stranded-on-death-row beat. You, stepping through the fog and creeping through the smog.

It's the number one nigga from the hood. Doggy Dog. I could do this all day. There's too much to talk about. It's overwhelming. I'm overwhelmed. I keep forgetting to talk about weed. They smoked a lot of weed.

Don't overthink it. Nothing but a G-thang peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Couldn't quite top snows and former. That's funny. That's objectively funny. In 1992, a rap song that crossed over meant you can't touch this or ice ice baby. but the chronic didn't cross over to pop. It was instrumental in making rap and pop synonymous.

It brought gangster rap to the suburbs without compromising, without watering or dumbing or, for that matter, calming down. And suddenly G-Funk was everywhere. Take our old pal EZE, who naturally did not take kindly to being disparaged throughout the chronic, and responded with 1993's Real Motherfucking G's, which would not exist without Dr. Dre for reasons that go beyond it being a Dr. Dre diss track.

You've got to watch the video to get the full effect, but Easy also drags the world-class reckon crew back into it. So that's terrible. That's objectively terrible. Especially through the prism of the L.A. riots, the chronic brought an immense amount of light into the world, a crucial bit of illumination. YoMTV raps showed America a fundamental truth about L.A. that CNN did not. It was not entirely darkness and ugliness and destruction and death, but there was a whole lot of all of that.

I'm guessing there's not much information you require in terms of an epilogue. We'd lose EZE to AIDS in 1995, on the cusp, as the myth goes, of an NWA reunion. Death Row records would get Tupac Shakur, and Drey and Tupac would achieve world historic chemistry, if only for one song, and then the world would lose Tupac Shakur, and death row would collapse, and Shug Night would go to jail. Shug Night is specifically in jail right now for killing a man in a hit-and-run incident on the set of a promo video for Straight Outta Compton, the movie, which is an uncomfortably vivid example of gangster rap myth and gangster rap reality violently colliding.

Ice Cube would get bigger and richer. Stoop Dogg, who's 1993 Dr. Dre produced debut album, Doggy Style, would sell 7 million copies in the U.S., which is to say it sold twice as many copies as the chronic, he would get bigger and richer. And post-death row, Dr. Dre, would get biggest and richest of all, rebuilding yet again. Thanks to some flashy business deals, yes, sure, thanks to his next official solo album, 2001,

which was released in 1999 and also sold twice as many copies as the chronic. But mostly thanks to another nasal rapper, Dre discovered and molded into superstardom as the 90s dragged to a close. This guy was named Eminem, and he was white, and he would say anything. Turns out Dr. Dre had fantastic chemistry with this guy, too, because one of the many things Dre taught us is that perfect harmony can be the ugliest sound of all. My guest today is Sheldon Pierce, music writer, and editor at The New Yorker. He's written for Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and PR, and the like, and he'll be publishing an

oral history of Tupac later this year. Sheldon, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for having me, Rob. I appreciate it. Of course. Sheldon, you wrote a pitchfork review of The Chronic and gave it a perfect 10 rating, and you described nothing but a G-thing as a perfect rap song, if ever there was one. What makes this album and this song perfect? Yeah, so the thing about The Chronic is that it, there's always talk about, how an album or a song sounds like nothing that ever came before. A lot of times that's hyperbole. With The Chronic, it really is like this sort of zeitgeist moment

where the stars align for West Coast rap, and Dr. Dre pretty much invents the entire West Coast ecosystem on this record. Like, that's what happens with this record, and nothing but a G thing is essentially the thesis to this perfect. record, which is all about being smooth, being calm, being collected, but being poised and ready to strike, being on standby, never slipping, but also there's this sort of a good offense is the best defense type of thing going on here. It's like, I am prepared to take it to you if necessary.

And there's this very territorial thing happening, which sort of establishes not only the sound of this region, but a lot of sort of the character trait. like how people represent the West Coast. And everybody that comes after, all the pillars of the movement, are using this record, nothing but a G-thing in particular, as they're defining. It's what draws them, what's pushing them in the direction that they're going. Do you think that was explicit on Dr. Dre's part?

He was like, I will now define West Coast rap forevermore on one song. I'm not sure if he knew that everything that was going to come after was going to be a byproduct of this record. But I do think there was this intention to do the next big thing in rap. Like before, straight out of Compton, a huge record, a seminal record, I think it's the big bang of the gangster rap movement, essentially. But a lot of the songs on that record are inspired by the sounds of the East Coast. There's a lot of stuff on that record that producers on the bomb squad we're doing with public enemy. A lot of that stuff is sort of referential of East Coast rap. And with the chronic, he's like, no, we need a sound here.

We need something that represents us. This is L.A., this is Long Beach. This is Compton. This is the greater Los Angeles County area. and this is for the G's riding down Crenshaw with their candy-coated rides. This is for them. This is not for dudes in the borough.

This is for us, essentially. Is there a response to Ice Cube there? Because, of course, Ice Cube immediately goes and works with the Bomb Squad. You know, and America's Most Wanted is a fantastic record, but it's not quite West Coast enough, you know, by that measure. 100%. It is definitely, at least in part, a shot fired at Ice Cube. And also at EZE, this is coming on the dissolution of NWA and Ruthless and the whole deal.

And the primary antagonists on this record are EZE and Jerry Heller and Ice Cube. He's like, fuck everybody who was riding with me before. If you were riding with me before, you're a chump, fuck you. This is what we're on now. And sort of that is, he uses that as his fuel to propel him in this new direction. And it goes without saying that if Ice Cube does not sort of set this whole thing tumbling down, that the chronic never happens. Because a lot of this vitriol is in response to that.

It's basically all these members going out in different directions and trying to decide who was responsible for the success of ruthless records. It's very much Tom Brady or Bill Belichick type sit. Like who built this dinosaur? Like, who is responsible? And so they all go off in their various directions and try to prove it. And the chronic is what came out of Drey's attempts. Yeah. One way to think about the chronic is that it introduced millions of white suburban teenagers

to gangster rap. Like, is that reductive or is that pretty much what happened? And we might as well just deal with it. No, that is 100% the truth. I think you could definitely, the moment you could point to this thing, sort of invading suburban households is when the FBI serves ruthless records with this sort of cease and desist for fuck the police.

That is sort of this moment where rap music officially becomes dangerous, right? And it's like, okay, this is a thing that is going to pollute the minds of millions of our young people. Once you get adults sort of pushing back against this thing saying it can't happen, that's when you really get kids getting,

oh, fuck, yeah, I want it. That's what it happens, yeah. Right. And so, but the thing about the chronic is the chronic is sort of this smooth down, like, slick version of that, right? Like, straight out of Compton is bombastic. It's in your face. It's punching a cop in the face for sure. The chronic is a little more subtle about it.

Like, it's a little more swaggering. And a lot of that has to do with the presence of Snoop. Like, everything he does is fucking cool. cool. You cannot get under that guy's skin. He sounds like he's slick to the core and always calm. And as a result of that, him and Dre moving in tandem, they sort of seem like they're unfuck-wittable, like nothing can phase them. And a lot of that energy makes this record sort of fucking undeniable. Do you think the Kronick works without Snoop or does Snoop become as big a star without Dre? Like, is there any way to untangle who's doing more for who there?

It's so tough to say I think Snoop is the cornerstone of just everything that comes after on West Coast rap I think he is one of the most important rappers of all time But I do not think That he really jumps out the gate like that

Without Dre producing him Like Drey I mean in 1992 He was the biggest rap producer in the world Like he's coming off Just a string of success is not only NWA records, but the JJ Fad record, the fucking Michelet record.

Like, he's doing rap. He's doing R&B. He's untouchable. And that's part of where all his fire is coming from, because he's like, I am the hottest commodity on Earth. Like, the LA Times is comparing him to, like, Phil Spector.

And he's like, where is my money? And so without this force behind Snoop, he got catapulted to the stratus, as a result of that. But Snoop Dog is just like, he's the engine that makes this thing go. And between his work in tandem and then writing for Dre on The Chronic

and then his work on Doggy Style, there's no doubt that he sort of sets the bar for what a rapper on the West Coast is. Yeah, and Dre basically introduced the wider world to EZE and then to Snoop and then later to Eminem, which to my mind makes him the single greatest, like, talent scout, the single greatest nurturer of young talent in rap history. Like, what is it about Dr. Dre that he can just point at somebody and be like,

that is the next rap superstar? Right, right. So, I mean, I think the crux of this is that the term producer sort of gets often overused in rap music and maybe in all music, but there are a lot of beatmakers, but there aren't a lot of actual producers. Like, a producer will put an artist in the best position for he or she. to be their best selves recording, essentially. And Dre just had this uncanny knack for not only taking people with talent,

but taking people with talent and putting them in a position to be successful. And with Easy, it also, Ice Cube gets some of that credit, too, because Ice Cube was in there, pen and everything for everybody, which is why he was mad. Right. But Dre is like, he immediately knows, he's like, Easy E is the guy who needs to be out front. E has the voice.

And then Snoop, he's like, Snoop, he's got the swagger. You know instantly, everybody who's talked about Snoop as a young kid, they were like, you know this guy. It just, his presence in the room, he just exuded this pure, cool energy. So he immediately spotted that sort of poise, that effortless swag with Snoop. And then Eminem, I mean, the bars were there. Right. This kid is just wrapping his ass off.

So I think he just sort of under. innately what worked about rap songs and how to put different artists in the position to be their best selves in those situations. Yeah. Do you think of the chronic as fundamentally a political record? And do you think at time that like those millions of suburban teenagers recognized it as a political record? I think it 100% is political, which sort of speaks to rap being inherently political because

Dr. Dre has never been a particularly political person in his own right, and he really isn't now. Right. But I think the music is sort of speaking specifically to systematic issues that had plagued Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County and Compton for several decades by that point. It's dealing with, like, segregationist policies. It's dealing with a militant police force that had laid the wasteland that led to the uprising of games. gang culture. And so it is like carefully unpacking all of this in its own way. It's, I mean, it's not going about it the way that Angela Davis might, but it is still going about it in its own way. I don't think a lot of that registered for a lot of people who

are listening to it at the time. I think there is always sort of this disconnect between the political nature of the lives that rappers are living when they're in these situations. versus the lives that listeners are living when they're absorbing them in the comforts of their homes or whatever. But I do think there's a certain level of it that cannot be ignored. Like, I mean, the stuff dealing with Rodney King explicitly, where he's sort of like, all right, we are fed up with this. Like, we're about to light the fucking city on fire in response to this. That is something that you cannot gloss over unless you are willfully trying to ignore. ignore it.

Right, because the city was on fire, you know, while they were recording it. Right. You look at the track list, like, you've got Let Me Ride and nothing but a G thing, and right in between is a song that's very explicitly about the LA riots. Like, if you, I'm really curious about the contrast between CNN and MTV and how the LA riots were depicted, you know, or yo MTV Raps, I guess. Like, if you were an impressionable, clueless teenager in 1992, 93, like, what did rap music tell you that the news wouldn't tell you.

Yeah, I think rap music would tell you that these riots were in response to something. Like, this was the boiling point. This is the last straw that broke the camel's back. This uprising situation is the result of years and years and years and years of oppression. I think in a lot of these songs, even the ones that aren't explicitly political, you hear Dre and Snoop getting territorial being like, this is our space, this is where we grew up, we want to be able to live our best lives here. And I feel like a lot of that is an affront to the system that is trying to crush them.

Like they're like, and this is a part of them sort of being on the offensive, like taking the fight back to these cops who have been the enforcers for racist policies, a generation over, they're like, well, we can point specifically to these guys and say, they are the pillars of the state, fuck them, we're taking the fight to them. And if you listen to it, you can hear them sort of working out this system of responsibility and sort of trying to figure out how they can fight it the best way they can, because they don't know how to be sort of activists in this moment, or they sort of aren't the Black Panthers in this way. they are rappers. And so they are trying to work out activism as best they see fit. And this is the

way that they do that. Yeah. I mean, is it weird that Dre is my favorite rapper on the chronic? Because he's not the best rapper, obviously, but I feel like I can hear him like working that stuff out in real time. Like you can hear the fury and the venom and even like the stiffness, like the uncertainty of him compared to Snoop. Like it works for me in that way. Like there's the uncertainty I think is very affecting to me. Like are we underrated? him as a pure rapper at this point? I think absolutely Dre is underrated. And I think

the chronic could not be what it is without him rapping the way that he wraps on this record. There's this very, he is definitely the chronic's anchor. Everybody else is sort of moving around him. And that's how you know it's a Dr. Dre record and not a Snoop Dog record.

Is that he is saying, this is me. I'm standing here. And then everybody else, he's like sort of positioning them to work after him. And And it's sort of cool that he and Snoop are doing this sort of fire and finesse routine. That is what really sets it off. Like, he, I do think the stiffness brings a certain appeal to his raps that is awesome when juxtaposed with the poise of Snoop. Like they, and that's what makes a song like, nothing but the jeet dang so cool because he's like, Dre is sort of like lumbering through it.

But in his own, like, big, you know how he got like big and hulking in his, He did. He was like, that's how he sort of maneuvers through his songs. But it works for him. And then here you've got Snoke sort of like cripwalking through the shit right next to him. And so they're moving in tandem in that way. And that's really what takes it to the next level. I don't think you get the feel that the record gives off without Dre being the rapper that he is.

Yeah. You know, Dre in recent years, obviously, has been doing a lot of legacy management. Like, what did you make of Straight Outta Compton? The movie, you know, in that HBO series, The Defiant Ones about him and Jimmy Ivein. Like, how accurate a picture of Dre is being painted now as this sort of billionaire icon? Yeah, I hate Straight Outta Compton. I think it's terrible. All right.

It's so bad. I think the myth-making in it is so heavy-handed. I think the Defiant Ones try a little. bit harder to sort of make sense of the complete picture being a documentary, but I still think it falls short. They're only going to tell certain things that he once told. And so I think a lot of this is an attempt to sort of build him up as this central figure in West Coast rap.

He is clearly one of the most important figures in the movement, but I think there's got like E-40, guys like DJ Quick, guys like two short guys who were on the ground helping build this thing before him that are sort of being written out of the narrative as he tries to just take up real estate in people's minds as this West Coast figure. He's like, oh. Right. Exactly. Yeah, he's trying to lift the whole coast on his back like he's Atlas.

But it's just like there is no need for that. The work that he did stands on its own. I guess it's just a result of like once you become a one-percenter, you just keep wanting to gobble up more and more and more. And really, that's what he is now. He's a rap one-percenter up there with Jay-Z and Diddy guys who just continue to take and take and move away from what they originally stood for. Yeah.

The one thing you could say about the Defiant Ones is it does address Dee Barnes. You know, he talks about that. He apologizes. Again, for that. It's the question of separating the art from the artist, which is almost been impossible with Dr. Dre. Like, where does that stand now? I mean, he's recovering from an aneurysm right now, but he's also getting divorced. And this divorce is turning ugly. His wife is making abuse allegations of her own. Like, is there any way to listen to the chronic? Was there ever a way to listen to the chronic and not have all that in the back of your head?

I don't think there was ever a way for anybody who was familiar with the D. Barnes story. I do think in a lot of cases, some of these guys who got famous and sort of had their moments happen before we had a cultural reckoning with this kind of thing, they have sort of benefited from not having the searing spotlight come down upon them. And it's like in the aftermath, when straight out of Compton, the movie came out, there was this reemergence of interest into the D. Barnes case. But by then it's, I mean, that spotlight pales in comparison. into the Hollywood spotlight that is on Dr. Dre beats Empressaria, right? So it's like he has never really had to face the fury that would really put his career in jeopardy. He's never had to face anything like that. I think it is always important to take into account the harm that has been done in creating an artwork

because that harm is, if not more value than just as important as the work itself. I mean, you can't discount everything that went into creating this record. And that includes the violence sustained against women. He, at this point, it's serial. There are many, many, many cases out there. So it needs to be addressed. I think it's okay for people to say, I love the chronic. A lot of people there are like, I was a teenager when it came.

out. It did something for me at this period of my life, and that's fine. But it's also important to reckon with the realities of who this person was and sort of have this internal dialogue about what that means, that we continue to live in an infrastructure that props up abusive men and allows them to gain power while women continue to suffer. Well, that's a rough place to end, but I don't think there's anywhere else to go from there. This has been great, Sheldon. Thank you so much. Rob, thank you so much for having me. I've really appreciated it. Thanks to our guest this week, Sheldon Pierce.

Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales and Isaac Lee. And thanks to you, of course, for listening. And now, here's Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dog with Nothing But a G-Thang. We'll see you next week.