in my opinion...so at first, yeah I was speaking about the album, and said that "2001 was our best year" speaking about the year itself.

Nov 99, Streetz, Chronic 2001, and Eastsidaz "G'd up" single all dropped, and we knew we were back. 2000 had Balance and Options, Suga Free & Mausberg's project, Doggy's angels (great production) and a few others, but 2001 the year itself was much better.

From December of 2000 on to the end of 2001.....we had:
X "Restless" (got major love in L.A. at least)
Snoop "Da last meal"...along with "Dead man walkin" which had a few dope old tracks....
Bad Azz "Personal business"....
DPG "Dillinger & Young Gotti"...
The Wash Soundtrack...
Tha Eastsidaz "Duces & Trays" which somehow debuted at #4 on the overall Billboard charts...
Kurupt "Space boogie" which wasn't quite Streetz but gave us "On on site"......
Dilated Peoples "Expansion team" which put them in the know for L.A.'s "Real Hip Hop" groups
Tha Liks got us some commercial love with "Best u can"....
Nate Dogg "Music and me" which showed that he could actually make a solid album...
Baby Boy soundtrack with the titled lead single gettin major play...
Dogg Pound 2002 which was mainly leftovers, but had bangers like "Gangsta rap" on it....
2Pac "Until the end of time" which was probably the last good posthumous Pac album...
Soopafly's 99 Death Row album finally came out and was really just for us die hard types....
Jimmy Bones soundtrack which actually had some bangers on it too, mainly from Fred Wreck.


We had plenty singles in rotation, such as everything from those albums above, Shade Sheist "Where I wanna be" Chico and Coolwadda "High come down" Quik and Dre "Put it on me" Mr. Short Khop "Dollaz, drank and dank" Kam "Have a fit" (club hit, took Pistol grip pump), Nate Dogg was on EVERYTHING, so even other Region's singles had a West Coast feel, like "Area Codes" and "You can't deny it."

And then, Dre was still riding the success from Dre 2001, so he put out Busta "Genesis" in which some songs felt hella West. Ruff Ryders even had Tha Eastsidaz on a song.

Basically everything we did that year was dope, to me...and then, after 2001, we completely lost it somehow...everything changed. Snoop's bootleg to "Paid da cost" had songs similar to Tha Last Meal, and the actual album did as well, but the Neptunes had the lead singles. Knoc-Turn'al's lead single "The Knoc" with Missy failed to capitalize off "Bad intentions" buzz. Quik came with "Under tha influence" which had some bangers, but the Dre collabo didn't bring him outside of L.A. like we'd hoped. E-40 "Grit n grind" was a banger, and that actually started the shift of momentum up to The Bay, and showed a quick glimpse at Hyphy before it took over. Tha Eastsidaz basically broke up, so all we got was some leftover classics like "Bottom girl" in 2003. Xzibit and Snoop ended up beefing a bit, and Dre focused energy on Em and 50. Kurupt went to Death Row, and him and Daz split right at the end of the period where both of them made dope music. The Wash didn't generate enough hype for Dre and Snoop to keep working together at the time, and then the shit with JD and Suge made their relationship a bit worse at the time. Jay and Nas brought attention back to the East, setting up 50 (and almost Joe Budden) by 2003....and in 2002, The South was like "ok....we got a formula, let's GO" and started their dominant run.