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"Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" by Dr. Dre with Snoop Dogg
I find it quite amusing what a decade can do to your musical tastes. When The Chronic first came out back in the day, I had no idea what to make of it. I wasn't listening to hip hop, I was listening to modern rock and lots of it - Depeche Mode, Pop Will Eat Itself, R.E.M., Luna, Gigolo Aunts, Lemonheads, you name it. The closest thing to hip hop that I heard was when WFNX would play MC 900ft Jesus or the Dream Warriors. So, needless to say, I had no idea what to make out of Dre and his crew out of the CPT. What is this sound? What is this lifestyle? Why is everyone so afraid of it? Of course, remember, I was a white boy in Central Massachusetts, where our high school had a grand total of one African American student. So yeah, The Chronic seemed very alien to me.
Flash forward to the 21st century, and suddenly I love the album. What's changed? It is hard to pinpoint. It could be the year in Philly where I listened to the urban format radio station because everything else sucked in that city. Could be the girl I dated there who knew her hip hop and knew it well. Somehow, I sort of doubt it in the sense that I had to be already prepared for getting saturated in the music. In college I did dabble in safe, white boy hip hop like the Roots or Busta Rhymes, but it wasn't until well into the '00s was I ready to understand the sound and the rhythm involved. And once that happened, songs like "Nuthin' like a 'G' Thang" have become an entirely new experience to me ... and sort of like converting to a new religion, I seem to find myself trying to convert my friends over (hint hint Betsy). And really, I can't think of anything better than listening to Snoop rattle off "fallin' back on that ass/with a hella-fied gangsta lean/gettin' funky on the mic/like old batch of collard greens". Amen.
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Erik Gonzalez said on September 13, 2007:
And thanks to you, Liz, I've had "All Through the Night" stuck in my head all morning ...
If I could do the probability math, I could tell you what the chances are of getting the same song two days in a row. But sorry, I'm not that kind of scientist. Any brainiacs out there want to take a stab at it?
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imaginary liz said on September 13, 2007:
If it helps with the math, I have 3773 songs in my iPod.
And can that mathgod also tell me which lotto numbers to pick (assuming that 3773, 13, 3 are all relevant numbers in the equation).
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Rick said on September 13, 2007:
Your iPod is telling you something.
It is telling you that you should listen to Cyndi Lauper MORE.
She just celebrated her 54th birthday! Hooray Cyndi!
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imaginary liz said on September 14, 2007:
This morning Cyndi's "He's so Unusual" popped up -- at #18... weird!
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imaginary dana said on September 14, 2007:
This just in from my math genius brother:
If you have N songs in your ipod, and you play M on average per day, then each song you play the next day has (N-M)/N probability of being a song you didn’t hear yesterday.
So the probably that that you can play M songs on day 2, none of which occurred on day 1 is
((N-M)/N)^M) where ^ indicates “to the power of”
So if you have 1000 songs and play 10 per day, the chances you’ll hear at least one of the same ones the next day is almost 10%. If you listen to 20 songs the probability is almost 33% that you’ll hear a repeat.
This is similar to the surprisingly fact that if you have 23 people in a room the odds are more than 50% that at least 2 have the same birthday.
Not sure if that helps or not, but he sure is a smartie!!
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Reviews
imaginary liz said on September 13, 2007:
Ipod roulette feels like the perfect place to ask the question:
What's weirder -- that I've had Cyndi Lauper's "All Through The Night (LIVE)" appear on my shuffle two days in a row (both times on the way to work) OR that both times I listened intently and was touched by the stray cat line?