pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Here's another take on The Chronic, from 2017. I agree with a lot of it, though not all of it.

https://thequietus.com/articles/23741-dr-dre-the-chronic-review-anniversary

Dre barely used samples before The Chronic, nearly everything he ever did was programmed by himself or others, with live players any time he could afford them

That Quietus piece is really bad imo, I recommend anyone stop reading it after the writer admits he only listened to the record once right before writing the piece. Calling it "sub-gutter" music nagl in 2017 (or ever).

lmao my god it's terrible

Not liking music because of hateful attitudes in the lyrics, that are reflected in the performer’s personal behaviour, is a perfectly reasonable position for a critic or human.

sure but that position is not well-written or -argued in that piece

Perhaps it's possible to see these splurges of verbal violence as automatic responses to a life of crack-fuelled gang violence, much in the same way that vomit and diarrhoea are symptoms of gastroenteritis.

ha ha yes, that was obviously a first-draft last-minute part of the piece, whew

perfectly reasonable to not like an album bc of its lyrics, also perfectly reasonable to listen to an album more than once before deciding youre the bright boy to write a 3000 word piece about it.

To excuse their decision to respond to hate and violence with more hate and violence is bad enough: to laud the products of that decision as great art is indefensible.

what is this horseshit

like, fuck this shit:

celebration of a bewildered generation's half-enforced, half-chosen aimlessness

piece sounds like stuff Geraldo would say in 1995 in an episode "taking on" rap music, i cant believe it was written in 2017

The Quietus has not traditionally published...good pieces about music by POC.

I mean, I am in the front seat of the "fuck R. Kelly" bus so it's not like I don't think a performer's personal life should be ignored when deciding whether their work is worth engaging with or not, but there is absolutely no effort to even understand this album's point of view or critique it on the terms it lays out. Dre is, without question, better at executing his vision than R. Kelly, who is fucking stupid and says fucking stupid things in literally every single song he released and became super popular partially because white people liked laughing at him and black people got super defensive over him. Dre is actually saying something on this album if AB bothered to listen to it; I am not even a big fan of the album (I've always been way more into the Native Tongues/Wu-Tang/Dungeon Family releases than the West Coast people, selected tracks from The Pharcyde notwithstanding) but everything about this take except the direct attacks on Dre's personal life are horseshit.

yeah its one thing to engage with problematic lyrics/performers, etc, but this guy is just the 1billionth person who thinks they deserve the big brain award because they figured out that a scary rapper they dont like is also A Bad Person In Real Life.

Saying a rap album is "trash" because its too "bombastic" is like one step away from saying that its not real music bc theyre just talking, jfc even my mom had better antirap lines than that in the 90s.

The notion that all concerned could have done something worthwhile is impossible to avoid, because 'Lil' Ghetto Boy' proves they had it in them - even if it does so as much by its failures as its successes. It relies almost totally on 'Little Ghetto Boy', a track recorded twice in 1972 by Donny Hathaway, once on his storied Live album, but also in a studio version with strings that was included on the soundtrack LP to the film Come Back Charleston Blue. Fair's fair - the precise formulation of the billowing clouds of violins Dre conjures here do not appear in either of Hathaway's readings of the song, and they embellish the new track in a spectacular manner. But the opening, the main riff, and the hook are all copped directly from the late soul man. Snoop raises his game and writes with an air of reflection, though the overall intention of his two verses is to cement the notion of the steel-hearted product of the prison-industrial complex rather than to truly echo the social soul-searching of the original. Dre's verse, though better than anything else he delivers on the record other than parts of 'Let Me Ride', is forgettable: he presents drama in place of emotion, using the format of a cautionary tale to deliver an ultimately empty, nihilist message.

http://images.45worlds.com/f/ab/steely-dan-aja-abc-ab.jpg

also perfectly reasonable to listen to an album more than once before deciding youre the bright boy to write a 3000 word piece about it.

According to the sentence you're referring to, he didn't decide, his ilx0r editor did, and he had listened to it many times before deciding he did not like it and not listening to it for another 24 years

jfc even my mom had better antirap lines than that in the 90s

the fact that he spent the 90s writing pro-rap lines to largely rap-antithetical audiences (*clicks through quickly* and the two previous months' columns were rap paeans) does indicate that his distaste is specifically for this particular work, and he didn't spend 26 years trojan horsing his way into suddenly revealing that Rap Was Actually Bad All Along

dunno what to tell you man, coulda fooled me that the person who wrote this is a big fan of rap music as it is commonly practiced:

why expect consistency from the author of an album titled after a strain of weed, [...] which celebrated the drink-and-drugs lifestyle of the indolent gangbanger, who, a mere four years previously, had rapped: "I don't smoke weed or sess, 'cos it's known to give a brother brain damage"? Perhaps a defender of this doggerel will argue that it's our fault for expecting anything better

like damn, caught this rapper rapping about two different things, aka lying! Next you'll tell me that Lil Wayne isnt actually a martian

to be fair, i'm an old school hiphop head and i have never liked the chronic either.

doggystyle and dogg food tho? yes. those are both good.

kim hill interview addressing many of the same issues (and lots of others) but from inside looking out
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/opinion/black-eyed-peas-kim-hill.html
it's an interesting look back!

haven't watched it yet, but am thrilled to see a kim hill mention.

okay, after having watched it, i can say one thing for sure: kim hill will never receive anything except unending love from me. i wish i still had the sugar hill cd, but it has been lost to several moves.

otherwise, yeah: she addresses some really good points very articulately.

thank you for posting, ulysses.

thumbsup.gif

the chronic rules

linsecurity bear (sic) at 12:22 16 Dec 19

Dre barely used samples before The Chronic, nearly everything he ever did was programmed by himself or others, with live players any time he could afford them


?? Straight Outta Compton has tons of samples!!

american bradass (BradNelson) at 8:33 16 Dec 19

Perhaps it's possible to see these splurges of verbal violence as automatic responses to a life of crack-fuelled gang violence, much in the same way that vomit and diarrhoea are symptoms of gastroenteritis.

I can flow like pee coming out you-know-what
Or some dookie, diarrhea coming out your butt - Shaq Diesel, I Hate 2 Brag

Pitchfork being so psyched that Obama shares some of their musical taste really sums them up about now in a way.

?? Straight Outta Compton has tons of samples!!

some of the songs on Straight Outta Compton have a sample or three, only two or three use a bunch in Bomb Squad-influenced fashion, and he made idk a couple of hundred records that aren't Straight Outta Compton

there's probably as much sampling on The Chronic as on his previous records added together

Pitchfork being so psyched that Obama shares some of their musical taste really sums them up about now in a way.

― in twelve parts (lamonti), Tuesday, December 31, 2019 3:23 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/18084-anohni-drone-bomb-me/

cool

sounds like a fun happy tune

That song sucks really hard

i guess this is the thread where i would complain about the phrase “personified the hypocrisy behind climate change”

Oh snap, he’s got a few of my faves on his list

I don’t get why “Con Altura” is the year’s consensus Rosalía track, when “Aute Cuture” is such a hotter jam!

xpost to sic in the era of sampling he was using a few samples per track like in line with most producers

here's the DOC

https://www.whosampled.com/album/The-D.O.C./No-One-Can-Do-It-Better/

here's Easy Duz It

https://www.whosampled.com/album/Eazy-E/Eazy-Duz-It/

Above the Law's first album

https://www.whosampled.com/album/Above-the-Law/Livin%27-Like-Hustlers/

100 Miles and Runnin

https://www.whosampled.com/N.W.A/100-Miles-and-Runnin%27/samples/

I don’t get why “Con Altura” is the year’s consensus Rosalía track, when “Aute Cuture” is such a hotter jam!

agreed

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/

upper mississippi is otm

yeah my point re Dre is that he had a fairly brief period of sampling (ie once he could afford it), mostly used them very sparingly when he did*, and The Chronic was probably the peak of his sampling period, not a throwing off of shackles to which he had been inexorably bound for eight years -- and his additionally using live playing on The Chronic was standard across his career to date, not an unprecedented innovation

* the track 100 Miles & Runnin' is a WILD outlier

Yo, man, that's the formula

The Dre productions from 1987-1991 are absolutely bursting with samples. He was a Bomb Squad fan. Suggesting otherwise is insanity.

There's parts of the 8-Ball remix that are like Steinski or something, foh with that

dre has consistently sampled throughout his entire career. getting musicians to come in and replay a loop of a leon haywood or david axelrod record is "technically" not sampling outright, but c'mon.

this is my favorite sample-heavy/proto-Bomb Squad/peak era Dr. Dre production
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXGgWf2lacM

(also love how the main JB sample is from an outtake/"untitled instrumental" that was first released *that year*)

er okay *a year earlier* but whatever

and that's the short version!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCGI_R36oVc

mostly used them very sparingly when he did*

anyway yeah I agree w ums and whiney that this isn't really accurate

Did you hear Dave Grohl recruited the surviving members of Nirvana, along with other individual people that do have actual names, for a performance?

OK so I guess there were technically players besides the core 3 but it sounds like an intentional way to frame it to get better SEO than simply "Krist Novoselic". I was amused by this.