I haven't done one of these in a while, but this jam was queued up by the shuffle during one of my recent bus rides, and it's excellence has forced my hand. If you're a herohill completist, you'll recall we've had a number of D.O.C. related posts on the hill over the years, the most recent being the utterly hilarious list of 100 rappers we wish had lost their voice instead of the D.O.C. Why all the love for the D.O.C.? Pretty simple really, both the Ack and I consider his debut album, No One Can Do It Better, to be one of our favorite hip hop albums ever. I'm not really going to go into detail about why it's so great on this post, but factor in standout MC skills, contributions from the Ruthless family arguably at their zenith, Dr. Dre production, and the mystique added from the fact that D.O.C. was in a car accident after this album which severed his vocal cords and prevented him from doing a proper follow-up (his rasped-out comeback album Helter Skelter does not exist as far as we're concerned), and you easily come away with a classic album.

No One Can Do It Better was released in the age where closing your album with a posse cut was almost expected, so it makes sense that NWA would feature on The Grand Finale. The Dre/Yella produced track is a funky, uptempo mix of horns, piano, and guitar - and just let me say that any appearance by Stan The Guitar Man on a West coast record was always an indication of quality back in the day. Dre has some introductory words to open the track before Cube explodes out of the blocks to wreck shop. This is the Cube everyone my age remembers, bouncing all over the track with OG dexterity. He kills it and drops this classic gem: "Because I'm gone, you think I left you all, But I stay in your ass like cholestree-ol". Have a listen, it's better than I can describe in typed format.

MC Ren is up next and he's no less impressive in my book. I always liked Ren, he was a solid MC but never managed to translate NWA's success into anything substantial on a solo level. I mean he's done more than Yella, but who hasn't really. He has some nice lines, like this: "If you're weak it ain't my fault, Just take a kick in the ass and get turned into a pillar of salt". Biblically dope! Eazy is next up, and of course it's mainly the voice that carries him. It's not that his lyrics aren't solid (likely written by Cube or Ren), but it's just that everything sounds better when filtered through with Eazy's high-pitch vocal device. The ladies are never far from mind on a Eazy E verse, and this case is no different: "Never outdone, only outdoing, loving the bitches and the leave the hoes boo-hooing. Why? Cause they're addicted to what my dick did, the pleasure of pain, the wing-ding inflicted". Enough said.

The D.O.C. closes things with a typically solid verse, and as usual with him it's not so much what he says, but how he says it. He had an elastic flow, about to sound awesome at a break-neck sing-song pace and just as good when he slowed it down like on a jam like The Formula. "Never smile when the D.O.C. is in the room, Or I'm a send your ass to the temple of doom". I bet the Ack would prefer the D.O.C.'s temple of doom over Nemesis' temple of boom. Anyway, this is just an awesome posse cut. Enjoy it, share it with your family, tell your friends - they'll thank you for it.

MP3:: The D.O.C. - The Grand Finale

 Posted by naedoo on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 9:53 AM
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