2001 Review

Put this on a decent system and it still humiliates records made twenty years later. Every element is placed with obsessive care, the piano figures dry and forward, the bass enormous but never muddy, the drums tuned so each hit has its own space. Still Dre is a two note idea executed so precisely it became shorthand for the entire West Coast. Forgot About Dre is the best beat of his career and Xxplosive is the loop a whole generation of producers has been quietly stealing ever since.

What keeps it below the first one is what it is about, which is very little. The verses were written by a small army of hired hands, the humour has curdled into sneering, and the sex material is grim rather than funny. It is a producer's album in the purest sense. You are listening to a room being built, and it is a magnificent room.