Doggystyle facts thread

[⠀]

All of the greatest Snoop/Dogg Pound material is from before Pac, in the days when they were supposedly "lazy" and didn't know how to "work".  

Dre also made Snoop retake songs again and again and again till he was happy with the product or it matched the vision in his mind. Artists of a certain calibre, that have something valid to say in the first place and not just bumping their gums, can one take or drop multiple tracks on the same day.

The rest of the regular folk need to get back in the lab and take their time to craft something.

Some producers will fit the sound to an established artist. Others will mould an artist to fit their vision of the record like you say. That neednt mean the artist is doing something wrong. I'm talking about producers in the old sense, not beatmakers

Snoop (like Dre before him) is the type of artist that needs a "boss" in order to keep him focussed and on track. Pac on the other had was more self motivated.

Different strokes for different folks... As long as the end product knocks who cares.

Cool ok. Motivation is another thing.


Nas said if he's working on a track too long and somethings just not making it work, he discards it and moves on. Creative mindstate is another factor, even at his level

Yup, but you can see how with Pac it was always about the first take/raw emotion. That's what he sold you. Snoop on the hand always aimed for more of a sprezzatura performance.

[Will_B]

All of the greatest Snoop/Dogg Pound material is from before Pac, in the days when they were supposedly "lazy" and didn't know how to "work".  

Dre also made Snoop retake songs again and again and again till he was happy with the product or it matched the vision in his mind. Artists of a certain calibre, that have something valid to say in the first place and not just bumping their gums, can one take or drop multiple tracks on the same day.

The rest of the regular folk need to get back in the lab and take their time to craft something.

Some producers will fit the sound to an established artist. Others will mould an artist to fit their vision of the record like you say. That neednt mean the artist is doing something wrong. I'm talking about producers in the old sense, not beatmakers

Snoop (like Dre before him) is the type of artist that needs a "boss" in order to keep him focussed and on track. Pac on the other had was more self motivated.

Different strokes for different folks... As long as the end product knocks who cares.

Cool ok. Motivation is another thing.


Nas said if he's working on a track too long and somethings just not making it work, he discards it and moves on. Creative mindstate is another factor, even at his level

Yup, but you can see how with Pac it was always about the first take/raw emotion. That's what he sold you. Snoop on the hand always aimed for more of a sprezzatura performance.

Oh yeah I totally agree with u. I was just pointing out a 'true' producer giving instructions to an artist doesn't 100% mean they aren't capable in their own right. Producers and damn near anyone else critiquing an artist is what classics are born out of. Pac was exceptional on the mic, but tell me you've never felt deja vu listening to him. He could've gone much further lyrically had he had the chance (RIP)

[TraceOneInfinite Flat Earther 96']

dude u can't assume why a rapper can't be a good CEO tho. not everyone can be a businessman in the game...some artists should just stick to what they do best

Exactly.  Kurupt has been talking all this CEO nonsense since 1998, and to my knowledge he's yet to release even one artist other than himself.  I still remember him on Rap City in 98 bragging about he he understood the game and understood business, and CEO this and CEO that, and he opens up the album saying....

"THIS IS FOR ALL YOU 500,000 SOLD ASS MUTHAFUCKAS, GOOFY, DUSTY, DIRTY, PUNKASS MUTHAFUCKAS"

And Kuruption ends up selling..... 500,000!

...So it doesn't make sense when Kurupt is always talking about how wise he is compared to his days on Death Row, yet on Death Row in the 90's everything he ever did was a critical and commercial success.

[TraceOneInfinite Flat Earther 96']

Snoop (like Dre before him) is the type of artist that needs a "boss" in order to keep him focussed and on track. Pac on the other had was more self motivated.

Different strokes for different folks... As long as the end product knocks who cares.

exactly.  Pac could pretty much run his own ship.  He could tell his producers, engineers, co-artists, all what the fuck to do.  Nobody would ever question Pac's motivation and hunger.

...The Dogg Pound is a totally different breed from Pac.  Their shit is all about being a G, not giving a fuck, laid back shit....They needed someone like Suge or Dre over their heads to make sure they didn't just mail it in and actually put out some quality.   They aren't your punch the clock 7 days a week, hard working type of rappers.  And if they say they are now that's only because they've become spoiled and they don't know what real work is.

[DeeezNuuuts83]

Oh yeah I totally agree with u. I was just pointing out a 'true' producer giving instructions to an artist doesn't 100% mean they aren't capable in their own right. Producers and damn near anyone else critiquing an artist is what classics are born out of. Pac was exceptional on the mic, but tell me you've never felt deja vu listening to him. He could've gone much further lyrically had he had the chance (RIP)

He started to... XXL touched on that topic a while back.  Though of course a lot of the bootlegged material from the second half of his tenure at Death Row showcased some of that.  Definitely not quite on any next level type of stuff, but certainly huge leaps from his usual attempts at lyricism.  But that's just how he was... he wanted to take as few takes as possible and then do something else (not because he had ADD but because he already had another idea and didn't want to dwell too much on one single project).  That was something that he and Jim Belushi clashed about when filming Gang Related.  Pac just wanted to film and move on to the next scene, while Belushi was said to want to take as many takes as necessary to get that right one, though he later admitted that he knew Pac was just doing all sorts of things within such a short amount of time (movies, music, videos, performances, etc.) and was always on the go, and not just some lazy guy who was on some "Here it is, take it or leave it" kind of mentality.

Dre was a perfectionist (which is partially why it takes him so fucking long to do anything), which in itself is a gift and a curse, though when Snoop was introduced to the rap game, he was under Dre and did whatever Dre wanted.  Same thing with everyone else on the label.  So they all fell in line and did what Dre wanted, and it worked, and that was their model that they followed.  Yes, they all collectively did a ton of recordings together, but I bet that the total amount of stuff recorded at Death Row from 1992-1995 isn't far off of what Death Row recorded in 1996 alone.

[TraceOneInfinite Flat Earther 96']

Funny thing is, when I was 16, seeing Kurupt on Rap City talking about CEO this, CEO that, and business this, bussiness that, about having patience and doing good business, I remember being inspired, thinking...

"...Wow, this is a genius, he knows everything about business, I need to follow the same principals and I'm going to go far in life..."  LOL

That was a big marketing technique back in the late 90's the whole rapper/CEO hustle.  Master P marketed the hell out of that concept and a lot of his fans just admired his hustle.

...What got lost in all that was the art, and the actual quality of the music suffered.  When Em finally came out he put the focus back on the lyrics and the craft but I was buying into a lot of hot air in the late 90's rap era.

[Will_B]

dude u can't assume why a rapper can't be a good CEO tho. not everyone can be a businessman in the game...some artists should just stick to what they do best

Exactly.  Kurupt has been talking all this CEO nonsense since 1998, and to my knowledge he's yet to release even one artist other than himself.

I think Spooks was the biggest other artist to come out of Antra. They had several hits in the UK and the album sold 120k here (can't find international numbers)

[DeeezNuuuts83]

Funny thing is, when I was 16, seeing Kurupt on Rap City talking about CEO this, CEO that, and business this, bussiness that, about having patience and doing good business, I remember being inspired, thinking...

"...Wow, this is a genius, he knows everything about business, I need to follow the same principals and I'm going to go far in life..."  LOL

That was a big marketing technique back in the late 90's the whole rapper/CEO hustle.  Master P marketed the hell out of that concept and a lot of his fans just admired his hustle.

...What got lost in all that was the art, and the actual quality of the music suffered.  When Em finally came out he put the focus back on the lyrics and the craft but I was buying into a lot of hot air in the late 90's rap era.

The problem is that too many rappers are overzealous and think that just because they watched someone else handle the business aspect of the record industry, that they can handle it too.  50 is probably one of the more successful rapper-turned-businessman examples, but his track record as a label exec specifically was mediocre, as most of his money came out of the Vitamin Water deal.  Same thing with Jay-Z, he brought on a couple acts (Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek, Amil), but none of them really blew up, and he stepped away from that Def Jam exec position.

The same thing can be said for even the battle rap emcees too.  I watch a lot of it and all of their blogs.  They are starting to get some nice bread ($5,000 and up for a battle, with some guys clearing low/mid five-figures too), but a lot of them call themselves businessmen and know that there's money out there, but they make ridiculous demands that aren't supported by the financials, and the numbers that they present are totally unrealistic.  I'll save the explanations for that, unless you guys want them.

dude u can't assume why a rapper can't be a good CEO tho. not everyone can be a businessman in the game...some artists should just stick to what they do best

Exactly.  Kurupt has been talking all this CEO nonsense since 1998, and to my knowledge he's yet to release even one artist other than himself.

I think Spooks was the biggest other artist to come out of Antra. They had several hits in the UK and the album sold 120k here (can't find international numbers)

Shit, I forgot about them.  They had a nice little buzz with that "Things I've Seen" single, but again, they never got big.

[Hack Wilson - real]

what battle rappers are making outragous demands?


you mean like Okwerdz acting like an A-lister, asking for everything from grape swishers to steak dinners?   (joke...based on a Rone line)

[DeeezNuuuts83]

what battle rappers are making outragous demands?


you mean like Okwerdz acting like an A-lister, asking for everything from grape swishers to steak dinners?   (joke...based on a Rone line)

I got the line.

It's more about Loaded Lux and Murda Mook.

Murda Mook wanted $25k to come back, and he ended up settling for $20k to battle Iron Solomon at Summer Madness 2 in 2012.  I give him credit for putting together five rounds, each being five minutes, and not slipping once (at least not that I can remember), but that battle didn't really have any replay value, and it wasn't all that good.  People blame Iron for coming with some weak shit, but one-sided battles can still be good as long as the other guy brings it.  But Mook was aight.  Then he said he wanted $50k for his next one, so I'm guessing he's getting it (or something near it) since he's getting back in the ring in May against...

Loaded Lux got something like $12k or whatever to come back when he battled Calicoe at the same Summer Madness 2 event.  Most people feel like he won (and it just depends on who you give the second round to), but his third round was very memorable to the point where his "new" slogan ("You gon' get this work") was being tweeted by Jay-Z, and he also ended up getting a spot on the Howard Stern Show about the battle.  I think it ended up being Smack/URL's highest viewed video to date (with upwards of 3 million views).  Smack was trying to set up Lux vs. Hollow (who as you probably know was in jail during SM2), which was a highly anticipated battle, but it was well-known that Lux's upfront demand was $40k.

Unfortunately, the financials of a rap battle don't really support it at this time, when that's damn near how much they spend on paying ALL of the battle rap emcees, or at least a handful of them, yet the venues they use are likely not going to get much bigger since the physical crowd these events attract are still limited to maybe a thousand or two, and they're already charging $100 a head.  But the overhead still has to include the organizers getting paid, the venue getting paid, the film/sound/stage crews getting paid and also the other emcees getting paid.  Lux's counter was that his video got 3 million people to watch it, and that they could do a PPV stream and generate some money since he figures even a small percentage of people would pay.  He calls himself a "businessman," but his argument was extremely flawed -- 3 million views doesn't mean 3 million people watched it (as it could be 100k people who each watched it 30 times), and those views didn't occur overnight but over the course of a year and a half.  Plus YouTube is FREE to watch.  Put a price tag up, and a lot of these fans won't pay and would rather wait for it to drop.  So on top of the numbers being okay (yet you still have to pay a ton of PPV fees, even if it's streaming online), people can still crack the code and find a way to record it and upload it themselves.  Also, yes, the money from YouTube views is there, but it's back-end money that may not accrue for a while, yet Lux wanted a shit ton of money up front AND reportedly wanted a percentage.  Hollow addressed this in their battle, which eventually happened on UW, but it was uploaded the next day by someone anyway.  I'm sure UW took a hit on that one, assuming that Lux performed since he got what he wanted.  And his performance sucked in my opinion.

And that's what I mean... dudes think just because they want more money or make those kinds of demands, they think that they're businessmen.  Or when asked for the financials, they just provide some irrelevant numbers that don't really prove their worth.  But it's kind of like that TV show Shark Tank... people approach the millionaire investors with their ideas and lay down their business proposals.  One of the investors was like, "Why do you think that your company is worth $1 million when over the past three years, you have only grossed $60k from it?"  Get your money right.

[Will_B]

Just checked out Loaded Lux, he's the shit


Do he make music doe?

[DeeezNuuuts83]

Yeah. It's decent stuff but nothing I've really gone out of my way to listen to.

[PhunkyDoob]

But it was probably more about them just dicking around in the studio and taking all sorts of time to record a song and thinking that's how everyone else worked too.  It's inspiring and motivating when you meet someone else who does the same thing that you do but at a far faster and more efficient pace.  The bar gets raised, and it makes other people want to reach it too.

But at the same time, the period you referred to as being their best material was also when they were hungry rappers trying to make it and prove themselves.

This isnt facts. Everybodys different. Fast does not equal better.

Maybe thats how Snoop & nem created their best material, by fucking around. I would assume so. They had a certain personality to them & a flavor so them fucking around helped them create. Its like a comedian testing out his jokes in a room full of other comedians or his writers. They even said that alot of their skits or lines came from stuff like that (ie. "Deez Nuutz" opening & alot of other stuff).

[DeeezNuuuts83]

But fast doesn't equal worse either.  Plus you can spend plenty of time and money on a project, it doesn't mean it's quality.  I guarantee that Detox isn't going to be 15+ years' worth of effort, and it won't live up to what we were expecting for it to have been delayed time and time again.  Similarly, look at how Guns N Roses (particularly Axl Rose) burned through a ton of money and studio time, and they didn't really put out anything.

At the end of the day, if you're a record exec, who do will you appreciate more -- the guy who does three or four songs a day, versus the guy who maybe does one or two songs a week?  Who will make you more?  Who will cost you less?  Those are all things to think about, considering that running a record label has overhead.

[Hack Wilson - real]

I wanna see Rone vs Thesaurus