(Counterprogramming moves by friend-turned-foe Suge Knight led Dre to change the title to Chronic 2001, and finally just 2001.) “At first, he wrote about diamonds and Bentleys,” Dre told Blaze magazine in 1999. So he recruited East Coast rap god Jay-Z to ghostwrite lyrics for the first single of what was initially known as Chronic 2000. Yet the stakes couldn’t have been higher for the sequel to his masterpiece, The Chronic. “I’ve been in the game for 10 years making rap tunes/Ever since honeys was wearing Sassoon,” he boasts on this essential West Coast anthem.ĭre had already launched a modest comeback with his work on Snoop Dogg’s fan-favorite “B Please,” and Eminem’s multiplatinum debut, The Slim Shady LP. And with his deep, authoritative voice, he matches 2Pac’s more antic, fire-breathing delivery. Dre ingeniously mixed Roger Troutman’s talk-box vocals with an interpolation of the well-worn B-boy break of Joe Cocker’s “Woman to Woman.” The combination gives the song a classic feel a blend of East Coast sample sensibilities and West Coast funk vibes that went unnoticed during the height of hip-hop coastal tensions. (He also spent some time in prison on drunk-driving charges, an experience that he later said forced him to clean up his lifestyle.) Despite behind-the-scenes tensions, “California Love” immediately became the kind of party starter that, 20 years after its release, can still set a dance floor on fire. Dre, for his part, plotted an escape from Death Row, alarmed at the label’s increasingly wayward drift. New signee 2Pac, one of hip-hop’s first great workaholics and a pioneer for rap’s “make 1,000 songs” model of studio profligacy, chafed at Dre’s perfectionist tendencies. Dre’s last great moment with the world-conquering label he and Suge Knight co-founded.
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