Review: Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle (1993, Death Row/Interscope/Atlantic)
All Doggystyle has to offer is another couple pounds of Chronic - essentially promising to please just about anybody. From the bassy, rumbling intro to the ominous, lurking closer, the album treads the same path its G-Funk blueprint did, with a minute departure from the latter's Parliament influence and a little more sample variety: the 13-track, Dre-engineered classic includes a Slick Rick cover, remodels murder rap, further popularizes Death Row's growing roster and of course lets Snoop Doggy Dogg drool delicious charisma everywhere. Perhaps unfortunately, Snoop never gets lonely over Dre's wonderfully whiny beats, and the producer's raps are entirely replaced with lackluster labelmate guest spots; The Lady of Rage even gets the LP's first verse. It doesn't sound like a debut, and it shouldn't - Doggystyle is a warranted extension of Snoop & Dre's limited rap sheet, turning The Chronic into a double-CD party album and hip-hop into a synthy mess of catchy excellence.
Bump this: Gin and Juice, Ain't No Fun, Doggy Dogg World
Review: Eminem - The Slim Shady LP (1999, Aftermath/Interscope/Web)
Historically Dr. Dre's second Doggystyle, The Slim Shady LP is just as good and at least as important, formally introducing the millennium's most monumental lyricist and continuing 2001 with another set of juicy, bass-boasting sonic prescriptions. By the album's release hip-hop was everywhere from clubs to cars to suburbs, but nobody ever gave white kids a serious shout out - for the first time the genre nods to their disenfranchised in the form of someone they can easily relate to. And he couldn't be more engaging; Eminem's controversial debut sounds as fresh and original a decade later as the rapper see-saws between paranoid loser Marshall Mathers and psychotic sociopath Slim Shady, dropping the most shocking rapped material since '91's Efil4zaggin. Between drowning his wife on the haunting "'97 Bonnie & Clyde," hilariously playing a crazed shoulder devil on the ingenious "Guilty Conscience" and shooting up playgrounds on the lowrider-friendly "I'm Shady," Marshall reminds us of his baby daughter and gives us a peek into his lonely, loveless life - Dre should probably get this guy an actual doctor. With Mel-Man and the Bass brothers helping the beat behemoth engineer his best set of tracks since '93 and Eminem enlisting a whole new generation of hip-hop fans with his irresistible insanity, The Slim Shady LP remains as culturally crucial as endlessly entertaining.
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