Released: 2000
Don’t make that mistake, the one so many do, of having to accept that a classic song has to be timeless. Sure, you can have your Hey Judes and your Teen Spirits and your Call Me Maybes, but just because a tune sounds inescapably of it’s time you can’t just say it’s agency decays like some kind of musical half life. Sometimes, things are.
Dr. Dre’s much, much delayed follow up to 1992’s all conquering The Chronic, 2001 was confusingly released in 1999, and it’s popularity helped showcase a renaissance in partnership with master rappers both old (Snoop Dogg) and new (Eminem). We shouldn’t have been surprised about the latter’s rise under Dre’s mentorship, after all he’d once claimed he could take a three year old and make them famous. But Eminem brought a generation of fans he could otherwise have struggled to connect with, and as a result 2001‘s sales went off like very heavy ordinance.
Listening back now to Forgot About Dre’s orthodox, uncomplicated beats and g-funk flecks, the source era is unquestionable, and not just because at that point there wasn’t a corner of the world you could journey to without hearing Eminem’s punk’d rap delivery. Here was Dre back on familiar turf “I just basically do hard-core hip-hop”, whilst a disillusioned field sat back and wondered what was coming next. Straddling decades, centuries and Millenia, you may know when it comes from, but it still always sounds great.
The Voice Of Unreason 