How can you tell if someone has great flow? Simple: you take away the beat, and if you can still feel the pulse without the drums and keys blasting behind you, you’ve got some killer feel. Any rapper worth their weight in gold likely gained some of these skills through battles, freestyles, and other impromptu performances where backing beats weren’t always a given.
You can go however fast or slow you like, but if you speed up or slow down in the wrong ways, it’s going to throw everything off. Just like in comedy, timing is everything in the rap world. If you want a great example of how to keep the beat without the beat, check out Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg laying down their verses during the empirical track ‘The Next Episode’ through the acapella track.
Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre are a phenomenal partnership. The duo’s collaboration is one of hip hop’s most bountiful. Snoop Dogg revealed that he initially thought it was a prank call in 1992 when he received the call from Dre asking them to work together. Snoop even hung up on the NWA man but, after Dre called back, he accepted that this was a reality and he had been picked from obscurity to work under the stewardship of Dre. The two remain close today and headlined Coachella Festival together back in 2012.
Snoop previously said about his former mentor: “[Dre] showed me how to find me so that way when I stepped away from him I was able to grow and continue to be me and always keep that love for him to where we always got that open, close relationship where there’s never an argument between me and him.”
The love-in is reciprocal with Dre also on record as saying: “Snoop is always there for me, ready to work, and constantly motivating and pushing me and making me believe I could do it. I mean, I could always hear his voice in my head. “I cannot imagine where I’d be in my life if I had not collaborated with Snoop.”
This track saw Dre and Snoop return to their position at the top of the hip hop pile. It’s a song without much sentiment but with a huge amount of feel. It’s a track that not only encapsulates their relationship but also provides a pretty accurate depiction of the music world of the day.
