DJ Critical Hype is at it again. Two years ago, he put together a blend tape called Chance The Dropout that paired Chance The Rapper vocals with Kanye West beats. Now, he's doing the same with two west coast legends that many fans wish collaborated more: Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre.
"The Chance and Kanye tape has a lot of parallels to the Kendrick and Dr. Dre one, so it made sense for my follow up," he tells P&P. "Both pairs come from the same city and were big influences to their younger counterparts early in their careers."
The project has been in the works for a year, and once again features excellent cover artwork from Ian Klarer. Digging through each artists' deep catalogs also served as a learning process for Critical Hype: "I knew a lot of Dre's production but didn't know as much about Dre's more obscure stuff. For example, I never knew he produced weird stuff like a whole pop album in 1991 for this random dude named Jimmy Z who played the flute."
"Kendrick has so many flows, voices, and styles, plus Dre beats are really incredible, so I figured it would be dope," Critical Hype says of the whole process. "I was determined to make it work, but the truth is it wasn't easy. A lot of the tempos actually didn't mix well. It was a lot more work trying to find good mixes. I had to dig deep and make a capellas for about 60 to 70 Kendrick songs and try and find stuff I was happy with. I really wanted to mix 'Look Out For Detox' and 'Money Trees,' as well as a lot of album cuts off the DAMN. album. The problem is Dre doesn't have many slower beats. I'm really happy with the results, though. All the hard work and dedication to this project paid off."
Listen to the mixtape below and continue for the tracklist.
Is Kendrick Lamar the best rapper alive? We hit the streets of New York to get thoughts from the people.
