Dr. Dre’s Expanding Sphere of Influence

With the possible exception of the Delicious Vinyl team that gave us Tone Loc and Young MC, N.W.A member Dr. Dre has the hottest hand in hip-hop--an unbroken string of gangster-flavored hits coming straight from the Compton streets to heavy rotation on Yo! MTV Raps.

Out of the six Dre-produced albums released by Ruthless, the production company he runs with Eazy E, five have gone gold and the sixth is well on its way. The Ruthless sound--characterized by edgy beats and loose, funny but violent raps--has been appropriated by an astonishing number of other rap producers.

Besides Dre’s own productions, it seems that everyone even tangentially related to the Compton thing is coming out with album of his own. Ex-N.W.A members Ice Cube and Arabian Prince have current releases, with MC Ren’s side project C.P.O. on the way. And then there are these three albums and one extended single:

*** Big Lady K. “Bigger Than Life” (Wild West/Priority). “Don’t Get Me Started,” the first single by teen-age Riverside rapper Big Lady K, is still probably the best female rap song ever from the West Coast, something like a more powerful Roxanne Shante-style inflection over a tough Ike & Tina Turner beat. This is a pop-rap collection that’s at least as infectious as anything MC Hammer’s ever put out.

* 1/2 Compton’s Most Wanted. “It’s a Compton Thing” (Orpheus). The Unknown DJ has been around L.A. hip-hop for years, spinning records at the seminal club Eve After Dark, scratching--with a then-teen-age Dr. Dre as a fellow band member--in the group World Class Wrecking Cru. His Technohop Records released the first Ice T stuff. And here, with the young rappers MC Eiht and Chill MC, he’s created his own gangster manifesto, smooth soul samples overlaid with Vietnam-esque horror tales from the Compton streets, all the merriment inherent in brutalizing women and shooting everybody else. But the difference between N.W.A and CMW is as vast as the difference between Richard Pryor and Andrew Dice Clay: one’s real and funny, the other is just dull and derivative, machine-gunning its enemies to a classy, Barry White-style beat.

** 1/2 Tairrie B. “The Power of a Woman” (Comptown/MCA). Insiders have been talking about this white rapper in the Ruthless stable for so long that she has become almost myth, a curvy blonde with an awesome bent for profanity who could bring the most macho gangster to his knees. Finally, this supposed Wonder Woman of rap surfaces on this first release from Eazy E’s new label, and she’s as vulgar as advertised.

Unfortunately, her weak voice is reminiscent of another blonde--Debbie Harry, whose rapping on “Rapture” a decade ago still makes her a figure of fun in rap circles--and too many of Tairrie B.’s rhymes rehash old vendettas that are pretty hard to get interested in. Some of the backing tracks are great, though, rough and wonderful beats produced by original gangster rapper Schoolly D, and fidgety beats by Quincy D. Jones III that are as precise and original as anything his father ever put down for Michael Jackson.

*** 1/2 The West Coast Rap All-Stars. “We’re All in the Same Gang” single (Grand Jury/Warner Bros.). One might logically assume that an anti-violent stance is pretty much prerequisite to recording a song against violence. But the brutal calculus of the rap marketplace requires that rappers with gangster images remain hard at all cost or lose their core audience.

The beauty of this Dre-produced all-star title track is in watching the rappers turn back-flips to elide the essential peacemaking function of the song. Tone Loc brags about the invincibility of his former gang before admitting that the life of a rap star is probably an improvement. MC Hammer attempts to out-gangster N.W.A; the verse from N.W.A’s Dre and Ren exhorts their listeners that when they don’t kill each other, they’re “keepin’ a smile off a white face.”

The groove slams and the participation of nearly every important California rapper here is admirable. The song’s unpredictability and refreshing lack of smugness makes “We’re All in the Same Gang” the best all-star “message” record yet. Stick with the single: the album is filled out with a rather undistinguished compilation of tracks from unsigned new rap artists.