| I'll have to admit, i'm more of a rock guy, but to keep up on "The Sound" of hip hop, i'll pick up a few things here and there.
For some reason unknown to myself I have purchased every M&M album so far (just to keep up on what Dre has been doing). The stuff is good, but it sounds overcompressed to me. I always have to turn it down a bit, but what's probably just from M's voice getting annoying after a while.
OutKast is the only group that I am really impressed with their recordings. They have a nice studio in Atlanta and put it to use. The stuff always sounds fresh to me, and it's not so canned and dark that I can't take it.
I'm not sure if you guys would consider it hip-hop, but it's pretty damn close to hip-hop at points- the Gorillaz consistantly have the best sounding, best written and just overall best CD's that use hip-hop stylings that I know of. Then again did anyone expect the writing to be poor coming from the guy that wrote "Parklife"?
And the best "Rap" album recording is Paul's Botique by the Beastie Boys. Their other early albums are amazing as well but Paul's Botique was groundbreaking and still sounds fresh to me. It makes me want to go grab an Akai S900 and start sampling all of my records!
I'm pretty sure that Dre did some work on NIN's The Fragile as well on "Even Deeper" and "The Wretched" (not 100% certain, and I need to doublecheck). If so, it's some of the best stuff I have heard Dre touch. |