Training Day Soundtrack

 

The birth of the hip-hop soundtrack album in its modern form came in 1991 with the release of the soundtrack for the Lawrence Fishburne starrer Deep Cover. Raw and underdeveloped, the record contained quite a few duds, and only one standout hit, the spare and dark debut of a rapper named Snoop Doggy Dogg and his producer Dr. Dre. The sauce of that track, aided by the intense buzz over Snoop and the work he and Dre were doing on the forthcoming The Chronic, meant the record was a success and the genre was born.

Since then the hip-hop soundtrack has blown up, as records pack on the stars (often with b-grade material) and look for big sales. And now the genre has reached its apex, 10 years later, while incorporating certain elements of its earliest ancestor.

Like the soundtrack for Deep Cover (a film about a cop (Lawrence Fishburne) getting too deep into the world of drugs and murder), the soundtrack for Training Day (a pic about a cop (Denzel Washington) on the wrong side of drugs and murder) features Dr. Dre and a rapper named Kokane, and a decent amount of minor stars. However unlike Deep Cover, whose second biggest artist was Shabba Ranks, Training Day packs more currently hot big name artists than almost any other soundtrack, including Nelly, Cypress Hill, P-Diddy (with David Bowie), Gang Starr, Trick Daddy and Pharoahe Monch.

Unlike Deep Cover, and more like its legion of imitators, there is not a legendary track to be found on this album. The upside is that there are several excellent songs and a couple of interesting collaborations. Gang Starr, Phraoahe Monch and Dr. Dre with DJ Quick deliver the standout tracks. While Nelly's Number 1 is a decent radio hit, it lacks weight and is ultimately a pop throwaway. P-Diddy's collaboration with David Bowie is vastly superior to his last classic rock collabo rip-off (the pitiful and dreadful "Kashmir" with Jimmie Page, also a soundtrack song), it's nothing special and goes nowhere.

This is a CD to keep in your car, it's well produced and has enough big-name talent and hot tracks to keep it in the changer for a while.

Click Here to Order the Album