In the summer of 1992, Dr. Dre was shopping The Chronic, and by extension the independent label heād co-founded, Death Row Records, to major corporations for a potential distribution deal. On a purely sonic level, the album is uniformly engrossing. But The Chronic would be caricatured, by conservative media figures and underground rappers alike, as vulgar, corruptive, and without substance. At times, it is; at others, you can tell it was recorded during the Rodney King riots. None of that mattered to Jimmy Iovine. When Dre met him and played the LP, the Interscope mogul-in-waiting had one question: āWho mixed this?ā The answer was one word: Me.
For at least the two decades to follow, G-funk and its many tendrils (most of which run through Dreās follow-up, 2001) became defined by those mixing instincts: crystalline with an infinite depth of field. In Dreās music specifically, that obsession with clarity coupled with a rigorous sanding down of eccentricity to eventually produce music that is sterile to the point of claustrophobia. The counterpoint is DoggyStyleeee. For a handful of years now, the San Bernadino rapper has been reimagining the subgenre as something that could be dirty, jagged, handmade. His brief new album, Reawakened, pops and peaks and creaks under the weight of its swaggering source material in such a way that it seems to be bending physics itself around his considerable gravity. Recommended if you like: Dre, but love Quik.
Further listening
Nu Jazz, Un Jazz: New York prog-jazz that is what water torture would feel like if it were meant to make you feel good. RIYL: Deconstruction as a means to an end.
Doc Da Mindbenda, Bet the House: Slightly uneven in the way that all producer comps are when theyāre beholden to a deep bench of rapper collaborators, but it has the grit and bite that youād expect from an LP with a Black Sox cover. RIYL: Early-2010s Chicago indie rap with Griselda-level production value.