This song has such crazy vivid memories for me. When it surfaced, it had so much built-up anticipation and hype as the lead single to Dr. Dre’s 2nd (solo) studio album in 10 years. I remember downloading the song, and the album even as I anxiously awaited the leak on different FTP servers, or through IRC chat. Now all I’d have to do is google the album title and attach zshare or megaupload. Crazy.
Traditional Thursdays, Dr. Dre, and the pristine studio sound of commercial rap should really be a doctoral thesis that someone writes, but its just today’s theme. There are so many “superproducers” that strive for the sound Dr. Dre has perfected. It’s flawless EQ - snares that literally crack, basses that feel like water dropping in slow motion (or the cup on the dash in Jurassic Park), and instrumentation that sounds like robots recreated and optimized string quartets with industrial grade, sterilized, stainless steel. Something like that atleast. Dre is the King, capital K (6 MPC’s daisy-chained?) The first producer of the genre to fully embrace live instrumentation and composing .. and the first producer to overhype 5.1 surround sound mixing (Detox??).
Still D.R.E. is a perfect track to spotlight - it was the future when you heard it, and arguably yet to be replicated (often imitated though). The famous, famous key melody that never quite made Scott Storch’s career. The envied Dr. Dre drums. Even the strings for counter melody and bass. To me, it’s really hard to describe exactly how pristine and precise it sounds, you try.
The video below, take or leave, but dig around and find a nice 320kbps mp3 to download and ‘bump it in your whip’ on your commute home.
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