you will see why I said "tried"


01. Intro - some historical perspective i guess

02. Compton - weak start. not a good look for Mez and whoever wrote Dre's verse. 5/10

03. Genocide - the beat is kinda interesting. Kendrick murders his verse on tone and cadence alone. I'll have to catch the lyrics on a second listen. 6.5/10

04. It's All on Me - nice little groove. passable rapping by everybody. I'm not sure why this Justus kid is on here twice already 7/10

05. All In a Day's Work - hmmm. I am tempted to not finish listening to this album. Its not wack. It's just flat. Dre by the numbers. Like this track here only works as filler on an album with amazing songs on it. 6/10.

06. Darkside - Kendrick saves this song by finding an interesting pocket in this beat. 6.5/10

07. Loose Cannons - the beat starts out epic and the degenrates into some .... yawn. 6/10

08. Issues - This sample was put to better use on Mos Def's album. Here its just chopped up and buried in the mix and all the energy is gone from it. Nothing to see/hear here except maybe the novelty of Ice Cube rapping like he's not a rated-PG movie star smile emoticon 5.5/10

09. Deep Water - Again Kendrick to the rescue. Which has me thinking that the talent is as much to be blamed as the mediocre production. Looks like I'll just take the Kendrick songs and make a little EP 7/10

10. One Shot Kill - haha. Its very clear that Kendrick wrote Snoop's verse on this one. But he sounds good spitting it though. This beat gets tedious to listen to though. 6/10

11. Just Another Day - When the Game is a "refreshing" addition, how good is the album really? Anyway he makes the song. I like it 7.5/10

12. For the love money - Why am I doing this to myself? If Dr. Dre's name was not attached to this record, I would have skipped most of these songs. Half way through this song, I stopped listenting to it. It was still playing but my brain just stopped processing it and relegated it to background. I dont even remember what it sounds like but I guess we'll have to give it a 5/10

13. Satisfaction - Ahh...THAT's what this album reminds me of!! "Dr. Dre presents Aftermath" a compilation of his talent roster on his new label after leaving Deathrow. Dre himself barely acknowledges this album because it only had three good songs on it. Outside of the lead single with Ras Kass, there was nothing noteworthy on it and...oops...my brain tuned out again. 5/10 ?

14. Animals - Drums sound like Premo. It was cool to hear Premo on the cuts at the end. I'll have to relisten to this one. Feels like it deserved at least a 7/10

15. Medicine Men - I like the mood of this one. Spoke too soon... Eminem starts yelling and I am tempted to skip...he's going off though. Maybe I'll read the transcript of his verse later. 7/10

16. Talking to Diary - Good song. I get saving the best for last but this should not have been one the best song songs on the album. 8/10


In conclusion: this was mostly a waste of my time. I had low expectations so in that sense I guess he did not disappoint. I used to be a big fan of Dr. Dre. I couldn't afford to buy my own music in the NWA days but I bought everything with his name on it from The Chronic onwards (even the wack Aftermath Presents I talked about). When he started running out of ideas, he kept some of my favorite beatmakers on a salary and had them doing beats for him everyday for years. So I wanted to hear this album to see which beats he selected. Unfortunately it looks like even his ears are no longer there. Thankfully he got into the headphones business because musically he's _ _ _ _. I don't remember the last time he's charted in a world where these new kids are killing it with 1/10 the effort or hoopla. The sound has just evolved way past him.

Ps Justus is probably gonna go the way of other unknown Dre prodigies and he's not even as good as the past ones. Remember a promising west coast rapper named Hitman that was featured all over Chronic 2001? Yeah whatever happened to him? Bishop Lamont? Stat Quo?