TS: Dr. Dre "The Chronic" (1992) vs. Wu-Tang Clan "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" (1993)

Choose the sword and you will join me; choose the ball and join your mother in death. You don't understand my words, but you must choose. Come boy, choose life or death.

chronic

sb

"Yo you know I had to call, you know why right? Because, yo, I never ever call and ask, you to play something right? You know what I wanna hear right? I wanna hear that Wu-Tang joint... Ah yeah, again and again!

rev otm -- the chronic is dre's masterwork; 36 chambers is *supposedly* wu's masterwork, but really, there are 4-5 better assorted wu & related solo albums in their catalog

yeah, there's like 4 wu albums i'd rather listen to

not as a slight on 36 chambers

chronic overall

chronic was just what the world sounded like for me growing up. wu-tang was something weird i got into in my late teens.

^i've heard that said a lot around here lately and it never ceases to be wrong
chronic has some great, great moments but pretty uneven album. plus gotta subtract some points for Dre not even smoking the chronic while making it.

that was a xp, talking about other wu albums being "better assorted", w(ever)tf that means.

i think are misparsing that sentence.

you are*

yeah i am, 2 many beers

please, only 2 total semi-colons and commas per post, atm: thanks

West Coast vs East Coast? What are you trying to start here?

P.S. 36 Chambers no question

there are 4-5 better assorted wu & related solo albums

to rephrase: there are 4-5 better albums by wu-tang and/or its assorted solo members

I have never been able to make it all the way through the Chronic. absolutely hated it at the time.

basically the first rap i heard was the chronic and its derivatives, so it's pretty much the center of all rap to me.

36 chambers was my gateway album for getting into rap (how typical heh) but i listened to it recently and it didn't sound as exciting or crucial as it did several years ago. so i dunno this could go either way for me, chronic has better beats for sure but i prefer almost all the wu rappers to dre

You guys make me feel about a thousand years old

xp the chronic is just as much a collective effort, vocal-wise, as enter the wu is

Summer of 1993, my downstairs neighbor played The Chronic at full volume every single day for almost three months, over and over. I don't think I've ever been more familiar with an album's low end than I am The Chronic.

chronic has better beats for sure

wow

just...

wow

is that really that objectionable?

the "for sure" bit, yes

anyway i think this TS might provoke enough aesthetic biases that you'd just have to accept someone thinking that chronic has outright better production

dre's beats just never were really very creative. they were good, but eh take a couple dope loops, put em together, end scene.

i dont have to accept anything, what're you talkin about

rmde

reverend made dre elope?

dre's beats just never were really very creative. they were good, but eh take a couple dope loops, put em together, end scene.

to be fair, CREAM's entire beat was taken from one loop, I think. Everything-- the piano, the drums, the high pitched chime thing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wylfBQjL8I

think RZA did other beats besides that one though

This is already turning into one of those threads of praising one record at the expense of running down the other, which is wrong in every way. But if a choice has to be made I'm gonna vote for the Wu now and forever.

Sure, but I think a fair number of his are like one or two carefully selected phrases thrown on loop. Don't get me wrong-- I'm a huge Wu-Tang fan, and I listen to Wu far more than I listen to Dre, but I think many of RZA's beats would be surprisingly easily to replicate. xpost

nah there's almost always some quirky, off-kilter bits in rza's beats that intrigue me more than dre's relatively straight-forward approach. don't get me wrong, they're both great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIwFwh57__U

like here, yes there's just a few simple elements there, but he throws them at you in a multitude of ways. you'll get the vocal tic with the rhythm guitar stab one time, another time you'll double the vocal tic, the rhythm stab, plus one note of the blues lick, another time the full lick followed by a mini drum fill. there's an almost constant playing with the, say, 4 discrete loops. reminds me of Thelonious.

think RZA did other beats besides that one though

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Saturday, December 11, 2010 2:13 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

shame on a n***** was a straight loop too.

im pretty sure i argued with 'oops' many ilx eons ago about how his thing about 'hey adds little drum fills' and 'an extra stab here' is basically rap rockism

like for real dude ... and joe satriani sure can play that guitar huh

hey i'm sorry i like music that's interesting

i mean i'm not saying this is the ONLY reason why RZA is great, and this fact alone makes dre HORRIBLE. they're both great, and this is what sepreates them for me. if you disagree, oh well, i'm sure you've been WRONG 100 times today already. and it's only 245am.

no one cares about rza's intricacies, only the extent to which those intricacies create some kind of musical effect. if youre arguing intricacies for intricacies sake, who gives a shit

the thing is i'm not?

only the extent to which those intricacies create some kind of musical effect

this is all I'm saying, and perhaps you could've grasped that esp with the Monk ref?

but yeah continue to KIP while simultaneously looking down your nose at everyone

at what pt did you explain what the 'effect' of these random stabs (which tbh i dont really hear in most of his stuff -- & i think you are overreporting)

basically his shit sounded a little grimier than what was in ny at the time ... the loops were slightly off, he liked to loop stuff w/ a limited tonal pallette. its an awesome effect. but there's nothing that so 'obviously' elevates it above the way dre helped create g-funk & then singlehandedly popularized it

no youve made your point, rza > dre because rza occasionally added an instrumental flourish

sorry dude, maybe you can go accost some guy down at the quickie market to get your dueling fix

ad hom master here

dont hate the player hate the game

don't all those wiggly synths all over g-funk tracks count as instrumental flourishes anyway

granny you are totally using deej's rep as a stick to beat his valid points with

that didn't quite make sense but i am tired/been drinking

i'm tired/been drinking too and don't feel like arguing about music. it's dumb!

not trying to make a dig at him, but refresh me on what his valid points are?

is it anything to do with this: at what pt did you explain what the 'effect' of these random stabs

cause that reads to me as "explain how you process music", which I find to be an absurd topic here

it's not merely "instrumental flourishes". it's an entire approach to the samples that I personally really dig and makes his early beats extremely interesting and multi-faceted. like i said, this isn't the only good aspect of his music. there's tons of great loops that have been put together over the years, there's been a lot of unique styles and sounds that producers have come up with. but rza's treatment of samples was unique (at least to me) at the time and sets him above the rest (for me). feel like deej bends over backwards to really distance himself from any rockist or intellectual bent (from his past self? i gather) or wtf ever w/r/t hip hop, and so pounces any that whenever he perceives it.

actually pete rock did it before him, particularly an T.R.O.Y.
RZA upped the ante plus his beats were more skeletal so it stood out more

I'm going with Wu on this one. I just revisited "Chronic" after a long while, and while it's sonically very impressive, somehow it doesn't really speak to me either in the beats or the rhymes. "36 Chambers" may not be as great as some of the solo albums that followed, but it's a masterpiece nonetheless.

CREAM > chronic > rest of 36 chambers imo

what about shame on an n-word

dre's beats just never were really very creative. they were good, but eh take a couple dope loops, put em together, end scene.
--hope this helps (Granny Dainger)

LMFAO

good point

Dre had like a stable of musicians to play all those parts. His whole sound was like the first major production step AWAY from stacking loops, which would be key industry-wide when the sampling laws started being enforced. Put please continue to keep talking about shit you know nothing about because it cracks me up

"eh, pixar... Draw some things, make em move around, yawn"

Another dickwaver, super. Really don't get why people get so pissy about shit. No, I don't know much about Dre's process, but I do recognize a lot of familiar loops in his beats. Him having musicians replay them (think that's what you're saying?) explains why his beats have a smoother texture that I don't enjoy as much as strictly sample-based stuff.

I mean congrats you read something about Dre and I didn't, you win the music nerd battle.

congrats I know like the one basic thing about an albums production before being snarky about it??!

wasn't being snarky and don't really see how getting people to replay the loops makes my comment completely invalid. I'd just been listening to No One Can Do It Better early in the day and noticing all the loops he was using. anyway agree with deej that technical behind-the-scenes genius doesn't matter on its own, it's about the end product and dre's end product seems as i described it.

Like I'm only busting your balls for being totally dismissive of Dre for doing something that even a cursory listen of the album would reveal is not the case.

So you think the Chronic SOUNDS like loops being lazily put together?!

at times, yes. there's only 2 or 3 tracks on it I really like tbh. rest of them have this texture and atmosphere to them that turns me off so i don't listen closely to it.

never said lazily though, it's really well done obv

I like and listen to 2001 more than the Chronic.

I like Doggystyle more than The Chronic. That vs. the Wu debut might have given me pause.

me too, it's a lot more fun album and isn't as affected by the superclean late 80s/early90s engineering style as Chronic

And it doesn't feature Dre vocals. Big plus.

dre vox over snoop vox any day of the week

also

"eh, pixar... Draw some things, make em move around, yawn"

whiney i <3 you, this made me lol bigtime

does every fucking thread on this website have to turn into this shit

yeah who would've thought that this thread would devolve into butthurt chaos

i don't see why it should anymore than any other thread

I like and listen to 2001 more than the Chronic.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Saturday, December 11, 2010 3:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i do too. honestly understand why dre is having so much trouble/ pressure on his new record considering how many comebacks hes had ... & how much he really seemed like a trendsetter so many times. & obv it was about picking collaborators ... i dunno why he thinks past-prime akon is the dude who he should be working with, its just making his shit sound more dated than it needs to

yeah this should be doggystyle vs 36 chambers

i'd pick chambers but it would be tough

I wanted to ask about the albums that were the templates for a sound. I guess someone could start one about Doggystyle vs. any of the first round Wu solo albums

doggystyle vs. 36 Chambers would be tougher for me, simply because the rapping on Doggystyle is SO much better than the Chronic, in general.

he way dre helped create g-funk & then singlehandedly popularized it

singlehandedly? I dunno about that

who are the other pioneers of g-funk?

pioneer /= popularizer

Digital Underground was doing pretty similar slick, futuristic hip hop version of P-funk, Too $hort had his own take on it, so did Quik - P-Funk was a pretty massive reference point for west coast hip hop in general both prior to and after Dre.

which is not to say that Dre was not THE guy that broke the sound in a big pop way, he was, I'm just saying he was not an outlier or aberration within West Coast hip hop.

wu tang clan

but it's a close call

didnt say he was an outlier! thats why i said helped to creat. secret origins of g funk = above the law

kinda feel a lot of the chronic's individual songs more than the album as a whole, even though overall it's pretty great. but there are a lot of west coast albums i like a lot more than this. 36 chambers is just epic imo, even though there are some east coast albums i like a lot more as well.

yeah I dunno I'm probably just parsing minor semantic differences here but imho "singlehandedly popularized" implies that he was the only one with that sound making it big, and there were a ton of people that followed suit/were doing similar things that made the g-funk sound so prevalent for a few years there. it was a bandwagon, everybody jumped on it. Dre was driving the bandwagon, but it wasn't empty nahmean

Digital Underground was doing pretty similar slick, futuristic hip hop version of P-funk, Too $hort had his own take on it, so did Quik - P-Funk was a pretty massive reference point for west coast hip hop in general both prior to and after Dre.

― fuckin magnates, why don't they work (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, December 13, 2010 12:44 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so otm

...and, of course:

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

"A lot of people still don't recognize the sampler as a musical instrument. I can see why. A lot of rap hits over the years used the sampler more like a Xerox machine. If you take four whole bars that are identifiable, you're just biting that shit. But I've always been into using the sampler more like a painter's palette than a Xerox. Then again, I might use it as a Xerox if I find rare beats that nobody had in their crates yet. If I find a certain sample that's just incredible—like the one on 'Liquid Swords'—I have to zap that! That was from an old Willie Mitchell song that I was pretty sure most people didn't have. But on every album I try to make sure that I only have 20 to 25 percent [of that kind of] sampling. Everything else is going to be me putting together a synthesis of sounds. You listen to a song like "Knowledge God" by Raekwon: it took at least five to seven different records chopped up to make one two-bar phrase. That's how I usually work." —RZA, The Wu-Tang Manual, 2004