For Fans of Dr. Dre

Released in 1992, The Chronic did not just launch Dre's solo career. It invented a new gravity. The G-funk template: slow-rolling bass lines borrowed from funk, melodic synthesizer hooks, unhurried tempos. Every major producer in the decade after had to decide whether to work with that template or against it. Snoop Dogg arrived on this album as a fully formed phenomenon. The record is still sonically fresh in ways that most music from 1992 is not.

If The Chronic was the proof of concept, 2001 was the masterclass. Every sequence is deliberate: the interludes, the transitions, the way Eminem appears as a guest before his own career fully explodes. The production on Still D.R.E. and The Next Episode is so economical it sounds effortless, which is exactly the lie great production tells. This is a record that rewards headphones as much as a car stereo.

Allen Hughes' 2017 docuseries about the friendship between Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine is one of the great music documentaries. It covers N.W.A, Death Row, Aftermath, and the creation of Beats headphones, but what makes it remarkable is the portrait of two men from very different backgrounds who each needed the other to go further than they could alone. The archive footage alone is worth the watch.

FX's Snowfall follows the crack epidemic in 1980s Los Angeles: the precise years and streets that shaped the world N.W.A would later document. John Singleton's creation is unsparing about cause and consequence. It does not romanticize the same landscape that Dre's early music came out of, but it makes that landscape real in a way no other series has. Understanding Snowfall is understanding the soil The Chronic grew out of.