Suge Knight Reflects on 'Doggystyle' 20 Years Later

[Jimmy H.]

And movies, that's entirely different.

I respectfully disagree.  At a miulti-million-dollar studio level, I think similarities are too strong to ignore.

Regarding beats, production doesn't stop at the instrumental.  I think it's sad how so many people seem to think otherwise.  I respect that at least great producers like Quik and Dr. Dre understand that difference, even if a lot of their fans don't.  I actually applaud Quik for attempting to educate people on this even if so many didn't pay attention.

[bouli77]

doublee313 and jman know what they talkin bout

[mastdark81]

Personally I always felt that it was more impressive to come up with the beat/melody/drum pattern than to add the finishing touches to a instrumental already made.  Dre, however definitely is great at what he do because sonically his music was on another level compared to everyone else at the time.

Dre made a cassette tape sound cd quality. 

[Sccit]

Personally I always felt that it was more impressive to come up with the beat/melody/drum pattern than to add the finishing touches to a instrumental already made.  Dre, however definitely is great at what he do because sonically his music was on another level compared to everyone else at the time.

Dre made a cassette tape sound cd quality. 

thats because u dont understand how much harder the latter actually is...comin up wit a drum-loop, melody, beat pattern is easy as fuck. i can do that right now off-top, comin up wit new classic melodies in my head daily. the hard part is havin it come to fruition.

[⠀]

Say what you want about Dre but he takes other peoples musical skeletons and puts some mighty fine auditory meat on their bones to create a captivating end product.

I just wish he would do it a bit sooner.

[BlueSwan]

Once these guys stop working with Dre they never make beats anywhere near as good as Dre
makes and this is why:

1. He lets them use his setup of whichever session musicians and equipment he is using.
2. He has extreme quality control and throws out shitty beats and even "just ok" beats.
3. He knows how to combine the best beats with the best chorus and the best verses.
4. He mixes everything perfectly and spends ages picking out the best "sounds".

To break that down further:

1. Session musicians and Dre's setup
Dre's method is generally to make a ton of beats in a certain style, with certain sessions musicians.
Every so often they will get lucky and one will be amazing... that one they keep adding stuff to, different verses,
etc. until it is incredible.

When they were working with Dre, guys like Daz, Warren G, etc. had access to the same session musicians he used.
Now that they don't have access to those musicians, they can't really make beats of that standard anymore
(Daz has said that in interviews several times, that not being in a big studio with musicians, means he can't make beats on that level).

To Dre, it doesn't really matter who makes the beat... the more people you have making beats using the setup he has,
the more chance you have of "getting lucky" and stumbling on one that is good enough to "polish" and finish up properly.

2. Quality control
So Daz, Warren G, etc. are just making loads of beats... some are good, some are ok, some will be shitty.
And those guys, if they are in charge, will put ALL those beats on an album, so you will get an album with a
mixture of quality, because it's almost like they can't tell which are the good ones.

Dre picks out the ones that are the best and keeps those and throws away the shitty ones and even
the "just ok" ones. The beats for the tracks "Doggystyle" and "Poor Young Dave" are decent beats, but
they're just not good enough for Dre to include on the album.

3. Combining the best elements
When you hear stuff like "Every Single Day" and other outtakes, we know that Dre is using bits and pieces
of the verses from other songs they did and putting them on the best beats... he's using only the best choruses and verses
on the best beats...
While the co-producers when they're on their own will usually use a dope beat but with a wack chorus, or a wack verse,
or will have a dope verse on a wack beat... again, that's why their stuff sounds weaker when they stop working with Dre.

4. Perfect mix and sounds
Dre's mixing makes a great song sound fantastic... and it's not just the mix, he goes back and replaces
an average snare with some perfectly sampled and mixed snare, and gets things replayed over until they are
the best quality. The beat his co-producers make is sometimes just a sampled loop... Dre will get the musicians
to replay all the parts in the sample and then spend hours mixing them so that it sounds huge.


So when someone says, "oh, so-and-so made that beat" all it really means was that when they were churning
out loads of beats under Dre's system, that co-producer just happened to randomly make one of the ones
that was good enough to be taken to the next stage of the process...

It's like they just happened to make a dope piece of fried chicken, but they were using Colonel Saunders' recipe.
They can say, "hey, I made this piece of chicken, not Colonel Saunders," but that doesn't mean they
get to have their face on the front of the restaurant.

Spot on. I've been an amateur producer for 25 years and have been trying to tell people this for ages about Dr.Dre. I can put together a solid hip-hop beat in 20 minutes easy and I'm a far better musician than Dr.Dre will ever be, but I can NOT make it sound like a Dr.Dre record. It is all in the detail. The man is a genius behind a mixing desk and probably the biggest perfectionist in the business according to pretty much everybody who has ever worked with him.