“Who you think taught you to smoke trees?
Who you think brought you the OG’s?
Eazy-E’s, Ice cube’s and D.O.C’s and Snoop D O double G’s
And a group that said, “Muthafuck the police”

Dr. Dre

Ya. It’s a fucking orchestra for motherfucking Dr. Dre. And why not? It makes complete sense. Guy is a fantastic arranger. The only flak that he really gets is that nobody really cares for his lyrics or his flow, and that’s basically because he’s not that good. Outside of that, he’s our generation’s Cole Porter. You think I’m joking? Fuck no man. Guy produced: Snoop Dogg, 2pac, Nas, Eminem (he fucking founded the guy), Nine Inch Nails, Ice Cube, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Gwen Stefani, Mobb Deep, Alicia Keys, and a fuck ton more. You wonder why rap is fucking everywhere and has basically taken over the place of pop? This guy.

Also, N.W.A. is not something to fuck with. A group that spoke on behalf of an otherwise lost generation. One of the most influential and controversial figures in rap history. They made protest music in California during the motherfucking Reagan years. The Reagan years motherfucker!! That crony old fucking bastard. If you don’t know, Reagan’s “War on Drugs” was a thinly veiled attack on the African American community with 29 brand spanking new, mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences. You carry pot? Jail time. You were black and walking? Beating, then jail time. All done to fill up those jails will black faces. This is when “muthafuck the police” needed to be said. These were the days of the L.A. Riots. You want to know what riot music sounds like? You want to know what the arrangement of anger looks like? Take a listen.

Onto the album, Sylvester Onyejiaka leads Sly5thAve. He’s a saxophonist and official badass. The work put into changing samples into orchestra is well done. However, Dre used a lot of string samples back in the day, so some songs must have been easier than others. With my first listen over, I was extremely happy. Admittedly, probably more than half of that joy was just good old nostalgia. But, once the butterflies of my youth calmed the fuck down I realized that the album itself is a good showcase of a great writer. Which is good, because a lot of early rap doesn’t translate well to modern ears.

Records spliced together into songs on the streets of Compton, to songs arranged for an orchestra and a band is a triumphant movement. It shows a progression of some sort. Sure, life is still a fucking shit bag cock dripping motherfucking shit covered pile of chicken cunt, but things have been worse. It’s good to hear an album that shows you things are improving, instead of listening to all the other voices telling you it’s all getting worse.