Dr. Dre has added another accolade to his name after one of his songs was named the “Greatest Hip Hop Beat of All Time” by Spotify’s RapCaviar.
The streaming platform’s dedicated rap channel ranked the top 50 Hip Hop beats ever made in celebration of the genre’s 50th birthday on Thursday (May 11), and gave the esteemed title to Dre’s 2001 hit “Still D.R.E.” featuring Snoop Dogg.
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Produced by Dre, Scott Storch and Mel-Man and anchored by an iconic piano melody, “Still D.R.E.” held the top spot over other classic tracks like Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones Pt. 2,” Clipse’s “Grindin,'” Biggie’s “Who Shot Ya?” and Lil Wayne’s “A Milli.”
Memorable beats from Kanye West (“Power”), Diddy (“It’s All About the Benjamins”), Mike Jones (“Still Tippin”), Travis Scott (“Sicko Mode”) and Missy Elliott (“Get Ur Freak On”) also made the list.
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“Hip-Hop turns 50 years old this year! To celebrate, we did the impossible and ranked the top 50 BEATS of all time,” RapCaviar wrote on Instagram while unveiling their full list. “Let us know how we did. Remember these are the top 50 beats, not songs.”
Check out the list, along with a playlist of the top 50, below:
Needless to say, the list sparked a heated debate among fans on social media, with some not too thrilled by some of the selections.
“Nuthin But A G thang should be #1,” one person commented on Instagram in support of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s The Chronic hit, while another asked: “Where fuck is in da club?” referencing 50 Cent’s 2003 smash.
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Nevertheless, there’s no denying the impact that “Still D.R.E.” made as it peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release in 1999 and remains a fan-favorite to this day.
It’s well known that Dre asked JAY-Z to ghostwrite the lyrics for the track, which served as his comeback single following the lukewarm reception to his 1996 compilation Dr. Dre Presents: The Aftermath.
However, Dre’s old Death Row labelmate Daz Dillinger recently claimed that Jigga may have borrowed and re-tooled some old rhymes for those ghostwritten bars.
During an interview with Home Grown Radio, Daz said that the Brooklyn rap legend was influenced by one of his lines from Snoop Dogg’s 1993 Doggystyle cut “Serial Killa”: “If you ain’t up on thangs/ Snoop Dogg is the name, Dogg Pound’s the game/ It’s like this, they don’t understand.”
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He then referenced the bars that showed up on Dr. Dre’s track: “(If you ain’t up on thangs) Dr. Dre is the name/ I’m ahead of my game.”
“So in my mind, JAY-Z was listening to ‘Serial Killa’ while he was writing that muthafuckin’ rhyme, and I wanna get my money for that,” Daz said, before alleging that he did try to contact the pair regarding the incident, but was threatened with legal action.
“Music has no statue of limitations, ” he said before directly calling out Hov and demanding “some percentages” from him.
