>Even tracks where he got live musicians to cover songs. Its
>just not as transformative enough for me to consider his best
>work. Doesn't mean its still not good stuff.
>
>
>Snoop Dogg's Gz and Hustlas is an all time favorite track of
>mine, but not because of the production

Like I mentioned in a post above, the entire music industry was trying to mimic what he was doing sonically during that time period. The radio was dominated by musicians in every genre trying to find a way to sound like Dre's g-funk. Legends like Q-Tip (also sample-heavy) were reverse engineering The Chronic to try and catch some of the magic. And again as far as I'm aware, he was one of the first in hip-hop to replay samples as opposed to just ripping them.

If that's not transformative, what is ?

It's fine to have a preference for one approach to beats over another, and from that angle I can see what you're getting at and where you're coming from. But to then act like what he was doing on The Chronic/during that general time period was somehow less impressive or not as genre-shifting as what he did later, *just* because he was basing some portions of that era's production on interpolated samples (which every producer was doing at the time), is just crazy to me. Borderline disrespectful lol.